


and the summit wraps behind the horizon

by freudiancascade



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dancing, Heists, Juno is Five Mental Illnesses In A Fancy Trenchcoat, Other, Peter has an Identity Crisis, Shooting, Sparring, TW for mental health issues, alien hive minds!, canon-typical alcohol use/abuse, canon-typical blood/death/violence, dubious sci-fi elements, fancy parties, in this house we love and respect Rita Penumbra, jupeter, like telepathy!, sometimes eating funny-looking rocks has consequences, specific CW in author's notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-10-21 04:14:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17635832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudiancascade/pseuds/freudiancascade
Summary: Most thieves would kill for a partner who can read minds and Peter Nureyev just had one fall into his lap. And bed. And heart.Suddenly, he and Juno are on a crusade together to liberate a teleportation device that could change the shape of the entire galaxy. For starters, if they can pull this off, nobody would have to crawl through the sewers to escape their dead-end hometowns ever again. There’s also the non-trivial matter of this device being the only thing capable of safely removing the Martian growth from Juno before it kills him…or worse.But it’s a race against the clock. With a very motivated Dark Matters agent closing in on their trail, the memories of an ancient alien species weaving an ever-tighter web around Juno's mind, and their own fledgling relationship on tenuous ground, it's only a matter of time before something finally gives out for good.(Written for the Penumbra Mini-Bang 2019!)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as part of the Penumbra Mini Bang 2019--more fics from this event can be found at: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PenumbraBang
> 
> It's also got illustrations from the wonderful Risa (http://specialtater.tumblr.com/) and Urs (http://ursminor.tumblr.com/)--they both knocked it out of the park, and I'm so excited to show you what they created! Notes with more about those pieces will be posted in the chapters where they appear!
> 
> Beta work was done by the ever-delightful Cass (https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmbientMagic), who put up with far more of my garbage than any one person should ever be expected to and handled it all with grace and panache. Any remaining errors, of course, are my own.
> 
> Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment to check the CWs in the end notes on this first chapter, especially the ones regarding mental illness if that may be a trigger for you, before you proceed with reading this fic! Thank you!

* * *

**MARS - LONG AGO**

_In the middle of the desert, everything was red. And more than red. And less than red, all at once._

_The sky, red. The soil, red. The pounding sun, red._

_A distant heartbeat, something more than red. Still the same damn color, though. Juno could hear it running through his veins just as he could feel the ground below his feet, stretching out endlessly in all directions. Dizzy with the scope of it. Marvelling at how the desert had a way of making everything else so small and meaningless._

_And the colour of it, the sky spiking sharp against the shifting endless sand, was something deeper still. Red, only red. It was significant only because it signified nothing._

_On the horizon, there—a figure, far away. Human. The detective squinted, his arm raised against the blowing dust, feeling it turn to mud against the damp on his face. He didn't need a mirror to know there was red there, too, on his cheek below the right eye._

_He felt it in his bones, something so much bigger than his small human form, something that made him even tinier and less important than the desert itself already had. Something that kept calling out with a vast emptiness. Juno was a grain of sand; the desert, itself, cared little how he felt for it._

_Cared little for anything at all, and even Juno’s own apathy was made pathetic in the face of it._

_The edges of the distant figure dissolved into smoke and everything stretching past the horizon kept rolling away, distant hills and craters, valleys and plateaus that traced back, one by one, to the centre of him. And kept moving through, and onwards, and further beyond still..._

_He stepped forwards anyway, because the only other option was to go back, and that had never been an option at all. The figure on the horizon came a fraction closer, and then a little more: the only way to tell he was making progress at all against the vast expanse of sand._

_It turned to greet him when he came up beside it, and for a moment Juno was staring at his own face. And then he wasn’t, and then he was falling, though the desert itself hadn’t seemed to move…_

_And then he was entirely alone._

* * *

**CLYRIA—PRESENT DAY**

"Juno? Juno, wake up—detective, your eye is bleeding again, you need to wake up."

"What? I—oh, _fuck_."

Juno staggered out of bed. The world tipped sharply, and he pressed a palm to the wall to keep himself steady as he made his way to the bathroom attached to their cabin. It was daylight now. The transport ship still hummed, but the pitch indicated they were back somewhere with atmosphere for the engines to roil and struggle against. The warmth of a sun spilled through the oval porthole to illuminate the small bathroom; it was not the sun Juno had lived under for his entire life. He took in that much as he bumped into the tap with his other hand and began wetting a washcloth under the sink.

The splash of cool water against his skin was startling; he expected it to run red with the iron of a distant desert. Feeling detached in his own skin was nothing new, but something about this particular dream always got to him. There was a vast, impossible sadness to it, and ever since leaving Mars it had become much harder to ignore that feeling of quiet desolation. It kept catching against something beneath the surface of Juno’s own head, and sometimes the feelings mingled together in ways that took him the better part of the morning to shake off. The flow from the tap warmed slowly, bringing feeling back into Juno’s hands, and he tried to remember how to breathe.

"Was it my mind again?" Peter frowned in the doorway. He was naked from the waist up, his hair mussed from sleep, one hand tapping his own temple as his eyes narrowed in worry. Somehow, he still managed to look breathtaking. "If you’re still picking up on my dreams when we're sleeping, I can try taking a mild sedative before bed to see if that lessens the transfer."

"No, Nureyev. Gods, I just had a—a dream of my own." Juno shook his head. "I've already forgotten most of it." _Like trying to catch drifting sand_ , he thought, but did not say aloud. All that remained beyond his eyelids now was red, and he dragged the washcloth over his bloodied face in frustration. The cloth was white; he scowled down at it. Whoever made that particular decor decision clearly had no idea the kinds of things people tended to get up to in rented rooms.

"Was it the tomb again?" The thief’s voice was soft.

"I said, leave it alone!" The dream transference had happened one time, and Juno still regretted mentioning it to Nureyev—the thief had looked so heartbreakingly guilty, as though Juno didn’t have a steady enough supply of his own nightmares. It wasn’t a big deal to add another. Juno already dreamt of the tomb often enough for them both, anyways. It felt, sometimes, as though the ache in his head were still anchored to it—as though no matter how far away from Mars he went, there was still a tangible tie calling him back towards that horrible, dark room.

Irritated, Juno twisted his head to look out the oval window, more to avoid Nureyev's worried eyes than for any other reason. At first, the sight below didn't register. And then, all at once, it did.

He swallowed down a gasp.

Green rolled out over the curved edge of the horizon below, the tops of trees as soft and luminous as feathers. And there was a river, a real river—pure blue, the colour of a plasma spark. But unlike a spark, it was steady and solid and not ethereal in the least. It wound through the landscape, separating the tops of the trees, the wild and careless green wilderness that stretched out as far as Juno's eyes could see.

He felt something swell inside his chest, and struggled for a moment to place a name to the feeling. _Awe_ , he decided, was the closest he was going to get.

Beside him, Peter beamed. An eager smile, his lips curving just so as he appraised Juno's hungry face. "Do you like it?" he asked, as though he'd arranged the entire tableau below the porthole just for Juno to enjoy.

Juno wouldn't have put it past him, in that moment, to have slipped the navigation officer a few extra creds for that exact purpose.

"Where I'm from, this much green doesn't tend to just—just _happen_ like this. People usually have to work real hard at it, and the desert takes it away soon as they turn their backs anyways." _It's almost a metaphor for that entire blasted planet,_ Juno thought, but didn't say.

Nureyev waved an expansive hand. "You should see this planet in the winter, then. The trees drop their leaves, turn to black skeletons, and white flakes of ice fall from the sky.  The air is cold enough that people can see their breath, it freezes in front of them, and it gets dark quickly in the evenings. So they string lights between their houses just to be able to see each other through the storms. They strap blades to their feet and glide across the frozen water on them, too—it's a very elegant way to get around."

"That sounds miserable."

The thief grinned. "Oh, it's absolutely magical. And in the springtime, the green comes back." He snapped his fingers, sharp and crisp. " _Poof_! Just like that. The trees bud and the grasses flourish. They'd been waiting under the snow this entire time for a chance to come back to life."

"That sounds fake, but okay," Juno agreed. He dropped the bloodied washcloth in the sink, and shifted over in an implicit invitation.

"Oh, detective." Nureyev sighed as he took the offer, stepping forward to wind a warm arm around Juno's waist. "I am so very excited to show you a world where things don't always have to struggle to keep themselves alive."

“The tomb…” Juno said, thinking back. “Are you still having—“

“It’s irrelevant,” Peter interrupted, his hand playing lightly against the warmth of Juno’s side. “We’re somewhere new now. We’ve left that place behind us, and neither of us needs to look back.”

There was an ache in Juno’s head that begged firmly to differ, centred directly behind his right eye. But Peter was solid and real, and so much better than the swirling sands of the desert, so instead the detective twisted to press a kiss to the side of his face.

And tried, for once, to just breathe.

* * *

**MARS, PRESENT DAY**

"Well, I've already told ya a thousand times! Juno was gone, see? And I got this very worrying phone call, well, I mean, I missed the call but he left a very alarming message, like, the boss sounded well and truly worried! And at first I thought maybe he'd just gotten inta trouble on a job again, but then he—well, didn't come back, and then I was _sure_ he'd gotten into trouble, so I thought, who's the only person who can deal with this now? And I told myself, it's just like one of my streams, nobody asks to be a hero but sometimes that means you're the only woman for the job, I knew then and there, Detective Rita's the right woman to take the case! And so I—"

"Hacked into our most secure server like it was child's play and ran topographic scans of the desert using a granularity of detail that even our best experts have spent the last two days trying to replicate?" The exhausted-looking woman across the table pushed her sunglasses father up on her nose, her mouth set in a scowl.

"Just because you weren't using those settings doesn't mean nobody should!"

"Rita!" Sasha Wire snapped, slamming her fist down on the interrogation table. "Juno Steel has been missing for weeks, you're his last known point of contact, and _then you cannonball onto Dark Matter’s radar like it's not big deal_! You don't think that maybe—just maybe—things look a little bad and you should treat this situation with the gravity it deserves?"

Rita blinked. "You're the one who's not taking it seriously, not using all those fancy settings to take a good enough picture of the desert to figure out where he went."

Sasha paused and ground her teeth together, counting backwards from four in her head. “Let's try this again: where is Juno Steel?”

Rita blinked again, nonplussed. “Well, ain't that something. I'd been thinking, with all the bluster and the yelling and the big shiny guns, that you'd already figured that out.”

* * *

**CLYRIA, PRESENT DAY**

The spaceship docked at a port outside of the biggest city on the planet of Clyria. Nureyev crisply presented fake papers from the inside of his coat pocket to the customs agent at the gate, prattling off a long-winded story about their honeymoon as he laced his fingers between Juno's. They had been married on the garden world of Liotus, and apparently they'd had quite the argument over flower arrangements at the reception. The clerk's eyes glazed over as Peter began to detail the flavours of the various canapés the caterer had convinced Juno to have at the reception; the woman stamped the papers without another glance, and waved them through quickly.

Juno (wisely, for once in his life) kept his mouth shut, and allowed the thief to lead the way off the docking ramp and towards the baggage claim.

Then they were on soil once more, and a new world stretched out before them.

That first breath of air nearly knocked Juno physically back—it was rich with something floral and bright, something soft like the city after the rain, only _more_ . Greener, somehow. Damp soil, and plant life, and _air that was not recycled inside a giant dome._ It was enough to entirely chase the endless red and heat of the Martian desert from the nooks and crannies of his brain.

He had stopped dead in his tracks; Nureyev tugged him forward gently.

"I know what you're feeling, and yes, it IS marvellous," Peter said as he turned back, his eyes bright with mischief and something else that Juno couldn't quite identify. His mind was humming, too, the usually sharp edges and angles of his thoughts turned effervescent and giddy. It reminded Juno of champagne, the way Peter's excitement floated right to his own head. " _Arrival_. I never tire of it. Isn't it simply intoxicating, knowing you can be anybody you desire in a place where nobody knows your name?"

"And who do you want to be, here?"

Nureyev laughed, a sound that tugged on something deep and forgotten inside Juno's gut. "Somebody who's madly in love with whoever you decide to be, of course."

"Is that all?"

"For now. I was hoping we could workshop the details together."

The thief bumped his hip casually against Juno's as they walked. It was the kind of movement that, on somebody else's body, would have been an accident. But Peter Nureyev didn't _do_ accidents, so it sent a warm thrill through Juno's entire body—still a new sensation, even after everything they had survived together. Peter grinned, fully aware of the effect. "I also took the liberty of booking a room at a lovely hotel and making reservations for lunch."

"I'm looking forward to that, then," Juno responded as he lifted his own bag from the carousel, and he was surprised to find that the words felt true. "And after lunch?"

Nureyev laughed, winding his arm around Juno's shoulder. Juno fought the urge to shrug it off—instinct, that's all it was, instinct and a lifetime of knowing that being close enough to be touched meant you were close enough to be hurt—and instead lengthened his stride to match. Proximity made Nureyev's mind clearer, like tuning a radio, and so Juno picked up on layers of intent behind his next statement. Calculation behind the geniality; sharp angles and plans whirring like flying knives beneath the guise of spontaneity.

"Why, detective! I was hoping that, afterwards, you'd be willing to accompany me to a little party."

There it was, the ulterior motive, leaping out sharp as day. It was almost a relief. "You know I'm not exactly a fan of parties," Juno muttered, and then added a sharp " _dear_ " for the sake of it.

Peter paused, just for a moment, his eyes darting around the crowded terminal before casting a shaded glance down at the detective. "Something tells me, _love_ , that you're going to want to make an exception for this one."

Juno opened his mouth to argue, but then a stray thought hit him. He stopped dead in his tracks, mouth slipping slightly agape as the pieces clicked into place. "Explain _everything."_

"In due time, detective, of course."

* * *

The restaurant Nureyev had chosen was small and tastefully decorated with pale blue tablecloths and immaculate cream curtains fluttering in the gentle breeze. Peter fidgeted carelessly with the handle of his steak knife as they sat. His long, slender fingers moved lightly over the blade, expertly taking the weight and measure of it. Juno tried to force his eyes away from the gleam of it and met the thief's gaze.

"We don't have much time, but now that you're able to be actively involved in the decision, I want to make sure you're comfortable."

"What?" He reached for his water. "Sorry, got a bit distracted. It tends to happen when people wave sharp weapons around at me."

The thief's hand stilled, though his smile remained. "Your outfit for the party, dear. A dashing tux? A dazzling gown? Just say the word."

Juno choked on his water. "I, uh. Don't really care? I just. Wow. Don't want to spend all afternoon getting poked and prodded by a tailor."

Peter nodded blithely. "I did think that may be the case. With your permission, I'll get something in order."

"Nureyev? Nothing too fancy this time. I'd rather be able to breathe."

"Of course." Peter settled back in his chair, glancing across to the window. “To business, then. I’ve heard back from Dr Bronze.”

That piqued Juno’s interest. He leaned forwards. “What did she say?”

Doctor Evangeline Bronze was one of the leading experts in ancient Martian technologies and culture. Despite being funded by the foremost university on the frozen tundra of Asperata, her annual sabbaticals to Mars had made her something of a legend on their anthropology scene. Nureyev had first made contact with her by posing as a research assistant while under the employ of Miasma and—while Miasma had been all too keen to eliminate anything that even vaguely resembled competition—a series of thefts from the academic’s offices had sufficed to retrieve the needed information while sparing her life.

The man across the table from him was not a killer when he did not have to be. Juno knew this well by now, yet still felt better every time it was confirmed.

“She said she would need to run more tests to be entirely certain, but she’s taken a look at the research Miasma gathered off you in that tomb and believes she can help us,” Peter responded lightly, flicking through a menu with a frown. “We were right about the teleporters being key. It appears our tentacled _friend_ had found a way to use them on a microscale, splicing gene matter directly into her own blood.”

“Well, thanks,” Juno grimaced. “I was hungry, and then you brought up the tentacles, and now I might never want to eat again.”

Peter sighed, reaching across the table to take Juno’s hand lightly in his own. “My apologies, darling. Dr Bronze believes that, since they’re already attuned to Martian matter, using one to remove the growth from your optic nerve is the safest way to proceed.”

“And at least one of the damn things is on this planet,” Juno surmised. “Figures, of course the HCPD wouldn’t keep proper track of their stuff.”

“They sold it. To one Natalia Snow, heiress of a small fortune in technologies and patents.”

“Somebody pocketed the proceeds, and I bet Khan hasn’t even bothered doing an inventory count yet.”

“Indeed. And tonight, Ms Snow is throwing a soiree for her most intimate friends.”

“And you’re one of them. Why am I not surprised?”

“Of course I’m one of them, and I’ve convinced her to allow me a plus one on the invitation. Hence, the question: suit, or dress?”

* * *

**MARS – PRESENT DAY**

"See, I thought you and Mista Steel were friends, but that sounds like a whole bunch of legal mumbo jumbo you're going through over there and not like you wanna help him at all."

"Astute of you," Sasha muttered.

The agent ran the numbers, dragging her hand backwards through her hair. None of the options in front of her were good. If she didn't find Juno, somebody else at Dark Matters inevitably would catch wind of the disappearance and try to use it for their own ends, and then they would all be in a load of trouble. It didn't matter how distant their friendship was, or if "friendship" was even the right word at all for what they had become to each other. He was a piece of her past, and that made him a liability that loomed large in her future. Which meant she needed to figure this out, fast.

"Rita, how confident are you that you can follow his trail?"

"Well....."

"Rita!" Sasha slammed her palms to the tabletop, her voice breaking. And then lowering, dangerous. "Can. You. Find. Him."

The woman in front of her blinked, and then wrinkled her nose hard enough to set her bedazzled glasses askew on her face. “I think so! Yeah. Yeah! I was gonna go investigate—you know, like a _detective_!—when suddenly your goons were breaking down my door! Oh, my landlord is gonna kill me, Frannie always said —"

Sasha shook her head. She lifted a small silver device, clicked a button, and the shackles around Rita's wrists snapped open with a clatter. "I. Don't. Care. What. Frannie. Said. You're coming with me, and we're finishing this _now_. And when I find Juno, I'm gonna —"

"Give him a hug because you missed him?"

"Sure," Sasha said dryly. "You read my mind."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content and trigger warning time!
> 
> This fic as a whole contains canon-typical violence/blood/trauma, character death, firearms, dubiously ethical intentional uses and unintentional side-effects of telepathy, alcohol abuse, eye scream, potential police brutality (if Sasha Wire being Extremely Done With This Garbage counts as such), and mental health issues.
> 
> On that last front, this fic deals in detail with suicide, dissociative episodes, panic attacks, grappling with suicidal ideation and behaviours, self-injurious behaviors, navigating a lifelong mental illness, struggling with coping mechanisms, and the difficult road to accepting that you need help to get better.
> 
> I've tried to be sensitive, optimistic, and compassionate in how I handle these issues, drawing on both my own experiences and those of people I love and respect, but this is still a work of fiction and no one author can be perfect.
> 
> Please take a moment to do a gut check before proceeding, lovelies, and take care of yourselves! And if you want or need to talk, my inbox is always open.


	2. Chapter 2

**CLYRIA, PRESENT DAY**

The question of “suit or dress” had, for the most part, turned out to be completely irrelevant. The rest of the outfit for the party didn't get a second glance—Juno was much more interested in the coat that accompanied it. It was similar to the cut and feel of the one Juno had worn to pieces back on Mars, a trench that swept down to the knees.

This one, though, was _fancy_.

Juno’s favourite coat had been worn half to death. He wasn’t entirely certain anymore what the original colour had been, as it had faded to a nondescript brown, and half the Martian sewers had been permanently ingrained around the hem. He’d brought it to a dry cleaner once, and the way the man had paled had put Juno off the concept of allowing anybody else near his laundry for the rest of his life.

And then it had been lost in a tomb under the ground, and even Juno had to silently admit that was probably for the best.

This new jacket was dyed the sleek deep black of midnight, tailored to a sexy silhouette and perfectly pressed, with silver accents at the wrists and throat making it look like—well, “detective couture.” From a distance, they looked like stars against the night sky. Up close they were revealed to be small, intricate flowers.

No, not just any flowers— _r_ _oses_. The bright buttons had thorny stems made out of thread, twining out into shiny embroidery around the hems. The fabric was warm, and it felt _right_ when the detective wrapped it around his body and did up the sash. It sat perfectly against his shoulders, fell to the exact right length, and the sleeves let him move freely.

Peter fluttered in the bathroom, busy pinning small cufflinks to each of his sleeves. He’d been going back and forth between two different styles for the past twenty minutes. As far as Juno could tell, they were identical, but he could also feel the thief’s thoughts churning over possibilities and angles. The cufflinks were simply something to do with his hands while the real preparations for the evening were taking place. “Do you like it?” he asked, breathlessly, poking his head back into the hotel room. “I know it’s not exactly like what you had, but I’m hoping the few upgrades I made are suitable for your—“

“It’s —“ Juno began, in a hurry to cut off what was sure to be a long flowery description, and then shook his head. He was touched, despite himself. “Nureyev, it’s _perfect_.”

Nureyev sagged against the doorway, a smile teasing his lips as relief washed in a warm wave out from him. It felt like Juno’s own brain had stepped into a heated pool. “Oh, good. I’m glad. You look wonderful.” He adjusted his own tie with a brisk twist of his hand, and then the smile widened into something sharper, more dangerous…. and oh, fine, Juno could admit at this point that it looked damn good on him. “Shall we go, then? We don’t want to be late for the party.”

* * *

Rowan King was a big deal on Clyria, apparently. Or at least, judging by the fanfare that greeted them when they stepped out of the rented vehicle onto the manicured front lawn of a mansion, he’d existed for long enough to become firmly embedded within the upper echelons of society. The bottom floor of the building was alight with a warm glow, soft music wafting out through the open ballroom doors. Pointed spotlights painted the side of the building, casting deep shadows on elegant architecture. It struck Juno that he knew next to nothing about architectural fashions on other planets, but based on the way Peter straightened beside him, he could be relatively certain this one was on the cutting edge.

The security by the door took the few tasteful weapons the two of them had deigned to bring. That, in and of itself, had been a balancing act. According to Nureyev, bringing too many indicated distrust in their host, while too few would show them to be stupid. In the end Juno had ended up with a small blaster—“useless for anything important” he’d declared it, while shooting a pillow for practice in their hotel room—and Nureyev had selected a couple of shiny opalescent knives strapped to a visible holster on his thigh. They came away in a glittering string, looking like jewellery carefully folded on the tray, and then the two of them proceeded inside the ballroom.

People swirled across the dancefloor like hundreds of glittering moths, couples moving in rings around each other, breaking apart and coming together once more. It was dizzying, and the detective found himself pulling the edges of his coat closer to his body.

“Rowan! Rowan King! It’s been forever!” came a jubilant call, the voice of a woman that carried sharply like breaking glass across the crowded room.

Juno knew the type, even at a distance. Cloaked in sleek furs and dripping with blood diamonds, Natalia Snow’s hips rolled when she walked like she expected a gun to be hanging at her side. She flourished her hands in a show of delight, kissing the air in front of each of Nureyev's cheeks. "Rowan, my dear! How delightful to see you again!"

Nureyev quirked a grin, "Natalia, it's always a pleasure. You look ravishing. I need to thank you again, for accommodating my date on such short notice —" Here he paused, tossing his head in Juno's direction, a flush rising in his cheeks. "I admit, it's been a whirlwind and I was caught completely off-guard by his charms."

"Oh, no need to thank me! I do adore a good romance. You'll have to repay me by telling me all about it."

"Naturally. Perhaps next Tuesday, tea and cards?"

"You know I'll have to check my schedule before making any promises," Natalia countered.

Nureyev responded with a sweeping bow. "I'll await your RSVP with bated breath. Now if you don't mind, I'm sure neither of us want my date to feel neglected. Please, excuse us." He slipped a hand around Juno's waist and led him to the edge of the room; the buzz of his brain, rapid and alert, was not visible in the graceful lines of his body.

"She's a real piece of work," Juno remarked.

"If only you knew," was the quiet reply as Nureyev settled them both inside a secluded alcove. And then, "Can you read anything helpful?"

"No good, not without a visual. Not about to take a swan dive into this crowd to find one, either," he said, lifting the glass to his lips and narrowing his eyes. "They reek of money and entitlement. I'd pick up so much radiant garbage, there'd be no option but to scrub my neurons with bleach and booze for a month."

"Charming," Nureyev muttered, casting a sideways glance at his partner. "Are you alright in this environment, then? Where does that leave our next move?"

Juno lifted both eyebrows in mock offense. "Give me a break, _Rowan_. You must have had ways to accomplish these things before little old me came along."

"Of course I do, dearest. You should know that better than anybody. And you didn't answer the first question."

Juno drained the rest of his glass in a single swig, savoring the bubbles bursting on his tongue and hoping the alcohol would numb the pressure headache blooming directly behind his right eye. "As long as I don't go swimming anywhere I'm not supposed to, I'll be fine. Let's get this over with, then."

"If you insist." Nureyev extended an elegantly gloved hand; Juno took it, tracing painted nails across his partner's palm.

They stepped out together onto the dance floor as the music rose up into a new song, the dignified string quartet in the corner moving into a graceful waltz as though it had been waiting for them to join the dance.

Peter Nureyev was a wonderful dancer. Or, perhaps more accurately, Rowan King was a wonderful dancer—Juno had no doubt that dancing ability was something that varied greatly between aliases, and spared a thought to wonder if Rex Glass would have been equally skilled. The thought made his stomach tingle delightfully.

And then there was not much point to thinking further. Peter Nureyev was confident and close, the scent and warmth of him flooding Juno’s senses, and Juno allowed his body to fall into the steps that Benten had taught him—by all the gods, it felt like he’d last danced a lifetime ago. Clyrian dance steps were slightly different, but the feel of them and the rhythm were the same as what he had learned. Peter stayed close, his right hand firm against Juno’s back as his left hand folded neatly beneath Juno’s fingers, leading them carefully across the floor.

It occurred to Juno that Peter must think he didn’t know how to dance at all, and the thought was almost funny. It rose in him like a flare, a sudden urge to prove him wrong. At the first opportunity in the music, he shifted his weight, choreographing his intent a moment before he actually moved. And then, as though Nureyev were the only person in the ballroom who could see him, Juno _twirled_.

For a moment the only point of contact between them was their left hands clasped loosely above Juno’s head as he spun out, his coat flaring with the motion. At the apex of the spin, time seemed to slow. The flood of the crowd’s thoughts, the constant pulse and pull of minds competing with each other for his attention, went oddly still.

And then a string of thoughts rose above the murmur, and Juno caught it clearly: _holding a gala like this when the ink is still dry on the papers—the acquisition records in the office are sitting out right where—_

And then they were moving again, the music swelling. Juno came back towards Peter, decision made. He dropped the hand that was holding Peter’s, putting it instead behind the thief’s back. Peter blinked, surprised, as Juno recreated the clasp of their hands on the other side. His confusion gave way to a small pang of delight before smoothly resting his left arm on top of Juno’s and touching the detective’s shoulder lightly.

It was a startling but very decisive move that left little room for confusion—Juno was the one leading, now, steering them determinedly across the floor and towards the waiter with the wandering mind.

“I had no idea you were so skilled,” Nureyev purred, his feet falling immediately in line with Juno’s change in direction.

Juno didn’t answer immediately, focusing in as the mind in question came back into range. _Just a little more_ —and suddenly there it was. He could see the entirety of the mansion suddenly, a blueprint that popped directly into his head. The well-worn paths the serving staff took between the most-frequently used rooms showed up clearly, and he nearly faltered. The office had been blocked off with the mental equivalent of the neon tape that the HCPD used in futile attempts to keep the media away from crime scenes (and which, in fact, generally had the effect of highlighting exactly where something illicit had occurred).

“I know where we’re going,” he whispered his reply, steering Nureyev towards the nearest exit. The thief’s grin only widened, satisfaction curling his lips into a catlike smirk as he allowed his detective to dance him to the door.

* * *

Outside, the garden was still. A breath of fresh air wafted across Juno’s face as he pushed open the door, and he nearly froze at the _green_ scent again. Still wasn’t used to it. Old ivies grew and curled romantically up the side of the building, and curated foliage led them onwards through the darkness. They circled a safe distance away from the building before creeping back, silently, to evaluate the distance up to the fifth floor window to Natalia Snow’s study.

Nureyev stared up at the side of the mansion with his nose wrinkled. Everything above the second floor was dark and silent, illuminated only by the lanterns behind them. Juno didn't need to read his mind to see the master thief read the angles and paths towards the darkened balcony above—a trellis here, a foothold there, edging around that window, and then....Juno frowned. After that, the architecture got tricky.

"Well," Peter announced finally, "this may require slightly more acrobatics than expected. Juno, darling, will you hold my shoes."

"What."

The thief bent down, threading delicate lace straps through a complicated series of interlocking clasps to free first his right ankle, and then his left. "There are very few things I can't do in heels of this height, Juno. But doing them _silently_ is a bit of a tall order, even for me." He wiggled his bare toes into the grass. "Do keep my shoes safe for me, I'll need them later."

"What, scared they'll wander off on you?"

Nureyev laughed, darting forward to press a quick kiss to Juno's forehead. "Not exactly. I'll be back before you know it, detective."

And then he was gone, scaling the edge of the darkened building like he'd been born to move vertically through the world, unbound by gravity or the laws of physics. _Perhaps_ , Juno mused as he hid the stilettos beneath some nearby bushes, _in some ways he had been_. That was the thing about Peter Nureyev, the thing Juno was still trying to figure out, the idea bouncing around and around inside his mind like a rock in a tumbler, his brain unable to find purchase on the whorls and grooves of it. Nureyev had a knack for making him believe that anything—anything at all—was possible. That one person could become anybody they wanted, simply by willing it to be so. That impossible odds could be beaten, simply by refusing to acknowledge them.

It was very strange, and not entirely unpleasant.

Juno folded his legs beneath him as he sat on a carved marble bench, watching. Peter made it easily to the balcony and pulled himself up and over, his clever hands making short work of unlocking the window and vanishing inside, the curtains billowing out in the night breeze.

For several long minutes, nothing happened. Juno counted his breaths, making it to the mid-thirties without incident.

And then everything happened at once. Something crashed; distant alarms blared, then closer ones. From the side of the building, the outline of a person moved from one shadow to another. Juno caught it in the periphery of his vision, throwing himself aside just in time to avoid being shot. The blast went wide, sending the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

"We've got company!" he called, fully aware that the warning wasn't necessary.

"My shoes, detective!" the thief shouted down from the window before turning back to the room behind him. "I'm afraid I'm a bit busy up here!"

"Worried about fashion at a time like this?" Juno snarled, fumbling beneath the bush for the shoe anyways. In that moment, he was painfully, impeccably aware of exactly how absurd his life had become—rummaging in foliage for a shoe, millions of miles from home, the unmistakable plasma scent of laser fire telling him more about the proximity of his assailant than any visual ever could, trying to reach out with his mind to predict their next move and getting only static, distance and pressure blurring his ability to focus well enough to pinpoint the intentions swirling around the stranger in the dark.

Nureyev poked his head back out the window, gasping for breath now as he yelled down one further instruction, "The right one! Point and shoot!"

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," Juno muttered, his hand finally closing around the shoe. Fingers fumbled against the smooth surface of the leather, and then found a small knob on the side. His thumb pushed against it without thinking; he swore loudly as a bolt of blue light shot out of the point of the stiletto and buried itself violently in the dirt beside his feet, "What the hell, Nureyev! I nearly shot myself!"

"Well, don't _do_ that!" the thief yelled back.

" _Yes, thank you, very helpful_!"

"Why yes, actually, you can thank me for—oh, come _on_!" Peter began, and then pulled his head quickly from the window. There was a loud crash above, the sound of fighting drifting down. Juno steadied the stiletto in his hand, hefting the weight and balance of it. Weapon like this couldn't have too many shots left in it—he'd have to make every single one of them count.

Behind him, another crash and a yell, and then she smash of breaking glass. Juno pushed himself back from the window, feeling shards of broken glass rain down around him. Another warning shot with the blaster, and then Peter was landing nimbly beside him and plucking the other shoe from the dirt. His wrist twisted around the glittering heel; a knife emerged from the stiletto.

 _Of course it did_ , Juno thought, and squared himself up against his partner. Despite himself, he almost laughed. “Get what we need?”

“Of course, darling.”

Nureyev’s voice was smooth, buoyant with delight. Juno felt the pang of his amusement echo out from his head. That was so like him, always the most alive when he was a fraction of a hair’s width from death.

Juno supposed he wouldn’t want it to be any other way, and raised the shoe for another shot.

* * *

 

* * *

 They nearly made it to the RUBY7, alternating between fighting and sneaking their way through the twisted maze of hedges towards where the car had deigned to wait for them. 

But suddenly there was another body in the space beside them, one of the guards from the front door. Juno recognized him as the bored-looking gentleman who had taken away Peter’s gossamer string of knives, and his heart sank.

Nureyev felt no such hesitation, twisting the guard into a headlock. Juno raised his arm, the shoe blaster heel pointed at them both. “Stop!” 

“Give me a reason I shouldn't kill him," the thief snarled between clenched teeth. "We can't afford to let him live." Nureyev's teeth shone in the low light, bright as the reflection of the man's pale throat on the side of his blade. He pressed it hard enough to draw blood, his knuckles white around the sole of the shoe; the guard whimpered.

"Because that's not what we're here to do!" Juno hissed back.

"That's not good enough."

"Fine!" Juno snapped. He took one deep breath, and then another, and then he tilted his head at Peter with his eyes vacant and a vein in his forehead twitching. " _You can't kill him because I'm in his head_."

Peter froze for a long moment, his eyes narrowing. Juno could feel him calculating the logistics of the situation—images and ideas flicking through his mind fast enough to feel frozen, motionless, no time to coalesce into movement. A thrown knife, a slit throat, a risk taken, Juno seizing or maybe dying right in front of him, no good, unacceptable risk, not a tenable situation—the rotation of the guards, footsteps down the path on the other side of the hedge, Juno couldn't hear them but Nureyev knew exactly how far they'd come, had measured and planned and paced that same line, making certain there was no room or margin for error, because error got people killed and that—that, too, was an unacceptable risk. That was where the whirling sandstorm of his thoughts kept circling back to: _causing Juno harm is an unacceptable risk. Everything else is a secondary concern._

Juno swallowed down a sudden flood of bile, feeling the pulsing pain behind his right eye shift and squirm. Stared Peter Nureyev down, certain that he'd won.

Nureyev lowered the knife. He swore in an unfamiliar language—no, not unfamiliar, the language of a memory, the language of a song in a distant town square, decades and dozens of buried lives ago—and twisted the side of the shoe hard against the man's temple. A jolt of electricity flared out from the elegant toe of the shoe. The security guard fell unconscious on the floor between them.

Juno stood his ground, not reacting.

Peter stopped dead, his eyes widening. "You were bluffing. You were nowhere near his head."

Juno forced a shrug, his spine stiff and shoulders aching. "Just doing my best to keep up with you." There was blood running down the side of his face again; the detective ignored it, crossing to the passenger’s side of the car. Trying to not let the shivery sick feeling in his stomach show in his face or voice. "We need to keep moving."

"We're not _finished_ here, detective."

"Oh, yes, we are! We're not going to kill some poor sap, not because he was dumb enough to show up to work the evening shift guarding coats and weapons that are worth more creds than he will see in his entire life! There's the movers and shakers, and then there's everybody else just trying to keep from getting crushed, and we're _not_ going to make that worse!" 

"You have no way of knowing —" Peter hissed, climbing into the driver’s seat. The RUBY7 beeped in acknowledgement, rising steadily from the ground.

"You saw how he let you get the drop on him! He wasn't some trained goon or hired thug! This job wasn't worth his life!"

Peter huffed, shoving his glasses furiously up further on his nose with one hand while the other brought up the light dashboard. "I’m sure it will end wonderfully, leaving him here for his employers to find?"

"I—Jesus, Nureyev! We're not cold-blooded killers!"

" _You're_ not, and that's one of the many things I love about you." The thief turned away. "At least, I'm going to keep trying very hard to remind myself of that fact."

Juno set his jaw, looking out at the glimmering mansion of Natalia Snow as the RUBY7 flew away into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork for this chapter came from the utterly luminous Urs, who heard "and then the shoe turns into a gun" and went "YES" instead of "Jay, why?" He did a stunning job, and I'm forever grateful. Those sleeves! That coat! That pose! The shooty shoe!  
> /swoons
> 
> You can find more of his work at http://ursminor.tumblr.com/ or https://twitter.com/brnwen.


	3. Chapter 3

**MARS—LONG AGO**

_The figure in the sand came into focus as Juno approached. He sat down beside it without speaking, instead choosing just to watch. It was wrong, and he knew it was wrong—Benten had been much older when he died. The boy in front of him was no more than nine or ten._

_That didn’t make seeing him here much easier._

_"You protected us," the boy said pensively, holding up a handful of red sand and allowing it to slip down between his fingers. His short fingernails were bitten to the quick, grime pressed close to the cuticles. "In the dark place. She wanted to hurt us, and you didn't let it happen."_

_"No," Juno said, shaking his head and feeling momentarily dizzy. Bile rose in his throat; it was as though, for a brief instant, he was keenly and achingly aware of exactly how fast the planet was spinning. "I didn't—I couldn’t—"_

_Benzaiten Steel peered over at his twin brother, and cast a quick little smile. A bright, furtive little thing, meant only for Juno, only for a moment. Existing solely to be seen. And in that moment, Juno knew in his bones that he was talking to a creature that wasn’t his brother at all. "Wrong her, Juno Steel."_

_His teeth ground together. “Listen, whatever you are —"_

_“We’re not Benzaiten, but you know that already. You and us — we all used to be part of something, I think?”_

_“You’re the Martians,” Juno breathed. This was a dream, and so the revelation didn’t have the weight it would have in the waking world. Instead, he just felt vaguely annoyed. “Why am I hearing you?”_

_“You’ve been hearing a lot lately that humans were never meant to, and that is by design. You took the pill. You can hear us. You carry our memory."_

_"Not by choice," Juno replied. And then, because it was a dream and because dreams are the one place where truths can be spoken without fear, he added, "I don’t want you to look like him anymore.”_

_"How do you do it?" the thing that was not Benten countered. "How do you be whole and complete on your own, when that was never how you were supposed to be?"_

_"You don't."_

_The child's face fell. "You lost your twin, Juno Steel." Benten shook his head sadly, his eyes now fixed to the distant swirling horizon. "We lost our whole species. We’re the only one who's left, now. How do we live, like this? How are we supposed to carry on?”_

_Juno’s throat closed up.  He couldn’t even hear himself as he whispered, again, “You don’t.”_

_There was a tear on the child’s face; Juno reached out to brush it away. His sleeve shone with tiny silver roses, and he was still seeing sunspots reflected in the shapes of their twisted branches when he opened his eyes._

* * *

**CLYRIA—PRESENT DAY**

Peter was uncharacteristically quiet over breakfast, sitting in the corner of the booth with the first rays of a distant sun painting orange over his features and his gaze focused firmly on a holopad. He was reading the newspaper from a planet Juno knew very little about, his mouth a small line. In a tomb back on Mars, Juno would have given up anything for a morning like this—the scent of coffee and the play of light across Nureyev’s pointed face, the warmth of sleep still softening his eyes.

Instead, Juno just folded his arms across his chest and waited for the confrontation to come. His head still spun with the fragments of his dream and it weighed heavily on his tongue, stopping him from making the first move. It had brought a swell of emotion to the surface, soft and painful and difficult to name, and he was finding himself struggling to shove it back down and return his focus to the situation at hand. Part of him wondered if it even mattered enough to try.

“Asperata,” Nureyev finally mused out loud, mild. “That can’t have been a coincidence, Miss Snow storing her stolen teleporter on the same planet as Doctor Bronze’s laboratories. With Miasma out of the picture, it makes sense to approach the next leading authority on the subject to get an appraisal of its worth. Perhaps poach some of her researchers, or approach Doctor Bronze directly with the research opportunity of a lifetime. Going there will be our next move. Natalia will have increased security, no doubt, so we’ll need to tread carefully and be ready for that. We need to see Doctor Bronze in person, before we do anything else.”

“She’s not going to let a patent like this slip through her fingers,” Juno said, lacing his fingers behind his head and rocking back on the far legs of his chair. Birds chirped outside the window, their plumage flashing in colours he’d never seen out in the wild before. He watched a blue one with wary eyes, feeling as though he were in two places at the same time. It was as though he were standing beneath two different suns, a galaxy apart, and they warred with each other for his full attention. One of them was warm and bright, Nureyev’s cologne and the lingering warmth of a loving embrace; in the other one, there was only heat and sorrow and death. He shook his head slightly, birdsong weaving through his ears as he kept talking, “The chance to revolutionize the entire transportation industry? Surprised Snow we could even get at a location for the thing last night.”

“Industry? Oh, Juno. She’s going to be infinitely more interested in the criminal potential. The ability to get anywhere, instantly? Almost as coveted as the ability to read minds.” Peter set the holopad down on his lap, his lips pressing together into a thin line. “While we’re on the topic, I suppose I should say that I’m sorry for the…argument…we had last night.”

“Wait. Just like that, you’re…. _apologizing_?”

Nureyev shrugged mildly. “I instigated it through my actions. We both know who you are, and what you believe. It isn’t a surprise that you would object to unnecessary bloodshed. If anything, I should not have put you into a position where your own morals would be in jeopardy. It won’t happen again.”

“That’s not—you’re just humouring me!”

“Would you rather I didn’t?”

“I’d rather you put cold-blooded murder off the table entirely, Nureyev!”

“If it means anything at all, generally I would not bother apologizing after a difficult escape. I would be long gone, instead.” He stretched his arms up above his head, spine arching, languorous as a cat. “We are both making adjustments for this relationship, and you’ve already sacrificed so much, but I would never expect you to give up an ounce of who you are.”

Juno thought suddenly of the coat Nureyev had given him, remembering the care the thief had taken to make sure it was a garment Juno would feel comfortable wearing, and felt briefly ill. The guilt rose up in him with a force strong enough to constrict his throat. _I don’t deserve the way Nureyev treats me_ , he thought, even as his mouth kept moving, “So you, what, give up yourself, instead?”

“Hardly.” Nureyev cast him a sideways look, his mind running itself in palpable circles. “I don’t have much of a self _to_ give, and what’s there is already yours.”

“Nureyev, I—aw, _shit_.” Juno closed his mouth, his hand tight around his coffee mug. “You shouldn’t."

The thief quirked half a smile. “Besides, it was a clever bluff. I’ve been a liar long enough to accept when I’ve been beaten at my own game, detective.” He reached for his mug, taking a slow sip. “Now, let’s have a lovely breakfast, and then we can prepare to travel to Asperata. I’m afraid you may need to bundle up for this one.”

* * *

**SOMEWHERE IN DEEP SPACE, PRESENT**

The transport shuttle shuddered, the faster-than-light jump rocking the outsides while the inside stayed steady and firm. Juno knew nothing about the technology that allowed space travel like this, and chose not to think about it too hard. Was trying to not think about much at all, and finding that a harder task than expected.

“Detective? You look like you’re trying to set the wallpaper on fire. It’s a hideous pattern, I admit, but I wouldn’t have expected it to be —“

“There’s rats in the cargo hold,” Juno interrupted, his eyes fixed firmly ahead. “A whole nest of them. At least, I think it’s rats. They’re not entirely…. _like_ ….the ones from Mars. Fewer tentacles.”

“Interesting,” Nureyev responded, flicking his gaze over to his partner. “It makes sense that the ancient Martians wouldn’t have distinguished between life forms when they created that pill. No offense, but your brain likely bears a much greater biological similarity to a rat’s than it does to whatever Martian anatomy used to process thought.”

Juno blinked. “None taken. Some of my best friends are sewer rabbits.”

“They must have geared it towards versatility. It’s not surprising you’re picking up signals from other species.” And then, “Sewer rabbits?”

“Wish we knew why the Martians made this thing at all, let alone taking the wide angle lens on genetic compatibility,” Juno grumbled, rubbing his forehead. “The rats….well, some of them are in heat. It’s impossible to get a track on _exactly_ what they’re thinking, but I’m having a hard time ignoring the general gist of it.”

“That sounds trying.”

“Hmm. And they’re still not as hard to handle as most humans. Everybody’s mind is running all the time, even when it’s going nowhere fast. At least the rats are honest about it.”

“Oh, _Juno_.”

“Still my name, and you’re getting close to wearing it out.”

“…Follow me, detective.” Peter stood abruptly, gesturing with an expansive hand as he headed for the door.

By the time a bemused Juno joined him in the hallway, Nureyev had freed two knives from his pockets. He weighed them both in his hands, considering, as he walked. Juno kept his eyes trained on the thief and away from the windows, as the blur of the galaxy outside gave him a horrible sense of vertigo.

"I’ll take this one," Peter announced, offering Juno the other blade. The edges were dulled to a harmless blunt, but the weight and balance fit well in the hand. Juno accepted the weapon without question, running a finger along the edge of it.

“I think your knife’s broken, Nureyev.”

Peter had paused outside a door now. Through the glass pane, Juno could see a small gym. On a short jump like this, it was empty; on a longer journey, he suspected it was a selling point that would add at least a couple dozen creds onto the value of a ticket. It was equipped with treadmills, weights, and a sparring ring; Peter let himself right in, heading for the last item on the list. He ducked through the ropes and up onto the mat, and gestured for Juno to follow.

Bemused, the detective did. “What’s the point of this?”

"You said you need a distraction. Well, defend yourself, then." And he lunged forward. Juno reacted on instinct, pivoting back with a muttered curse, the mat creaking beneath his weight.

And so, they fought.

The simple fact was that Juno Steel fought dirty, a childhood of scrapping on mean streets never entirely beaten out of him by the police academy. All elbows and sharp points, Peter was pretty sure he'd have begun biting and headbutting if this weren't a friendly match.

Besides, it wasn't like Peter's upbringing had been much better—he'd just actually listened when he was trained in hand to hand, overruled those rougher instincts with practice and precision under fire.

They grappled.

A fight of this intensity couldn’t last. Neither of them was backing down. Peter had been right, he realized with a pang of delight: this had been exactly the thing Juno needed to get his mind into the present.

But now there were _stakes_ to this sparring match. Bragging rights on the table. Of course somebody was going to make a mistake soon, it was inevitable, and it wouldn't be Nureyev.

So Peter drew back, palming his practice blade from one hand to the other, and twisted to strike with the concealed weapon. It was an element of surprise that had never failed him before.

But Juno was there before Peter had even finished the movement, deflecting the blade with his own and leveraging Peter's momentum to send them both crashing to the ground. The detective kept them rolling, legs locked together, and landed atop Peter's chest with the knife to his opponent's throat and a triumphant gleam in his eyes.

"How —" the thief began, and then squeaked in indignation as he saw the slightly distant look on Juno's face and realized what it meant. Of course there was no such thing as an element of surprise in that match—Juno had been inside his head the entire time. The lady probably hadn't even been able to help it. "You _cheated_."

Juno laughed once under his breath. "I think the word you're looking for is _won._ " He bent forward to press a kiss to Peter's lips, the blunted steel still cold between their bodies.

Peter surrendered and dropped his knife with a broken moan, lifting his hands to press his palms against the planes of Juno's back. "Still not fair," he breathed, pinned against the ground. "Against a real opponent —"

"I'd be taking every advantage I could get," Juno countered, sitting up slowly. "So, ready for round two?"

“Mmm.” Peter groaned again beneath him, nice and slow, reaching up to card his fingers through Juno’s hair and pull him back down. “Not quite yet.”

Juno obliged, kissing him again. There was something about Juno Steel that always delighted the thief, something that never stopped taking his breath away. The detective had this remarkable sense of _intensity_ about him, an _honesty_ that gave every one of his actions a delightful sense of urgency. It was the biggest rush Peter had ever known, better than any score or victory, more poignant than any adrenaline rush. He knew he was not remiss in calling it _love_.

 _There is more than one way to distract both a body and a mind_ , Peter thought with delight as he came up briefly for air. _If fighting won’t quite get us there, we have other options._ He felt Juno shift on top of him, hands already trailing beneath the edge of Peter’s shirt, and knew the lady had heard that thought, too.

_Excellent._

They had several hours still before docking; they could make wonderful use of that time, indeed.

* * *

**MARS—PRESENT DAY**

Rita had been right. Under other circumstances, Sasha would have been equal parts puzzled, intrigued, and annoyed. As it was, she was only concerned. The doors of the ruin in front of her were ajar in the sand, red dust drifting past them into the darkness beyond. It gave her the chills, and she checked the reassuring weight of the gun at her hip.

Should have brought a squad on this mission, or at least a partner. Or anybody, really, other than the voice prattling on in her ear. She ran another quick scan for life inside the Martian ruin; when it, too, came up empty, she began her slow advance into the dark.

For a time, it was uneventful. Labyrinthine hallways, silent as a tomb. Gruesome carvings in the walls, eerily illuminated by the light emanating from her helmet. Sasha made the mental note to send an archaeological team out here, once the mission had been completed. The mission....

Something crunched loudly in her ear. She nearly jumped out of her skin, resisting the urge to physically whirl around. The comm in her ear went briefly dead with the sound, and then crackled back into clarity before it happened again.

"Rita!" she snapped.

"Sorry, Missus Wire. I'm an anxious eater and somebody left popcorn in the break room."

"Who even let you into the break room!" Sasha hissed as she shone her light around an empty chamber. She turned to go, and then something crumpled in the corner caught her eye.

"Nobody did, the door was just there, but it wasn't too much work to get it open and if they didn't want me in they'd'a tried much harder to —"

"Shut up!" Sasha nudged the fabric with her toe, heart in her throat, and then breathed a sigh of relief. "It's a bedroll. Empty. But the blood —"

"Blood?"

"If he lost this much blood at once, it would have been fatal," Sasha confirmed, crouching to examine the fabric and the darkly clotted soil beneath it.

Rita wailed.

"Hold on, I wasn't finished. I think—based on the spread and coloration —" She paced around the room, frowning. "Somebody was down here for a long time. Probably weeks. He could have survived it spread out over that time period, easily. Hang on, I'm taking a sample."

"Blood, human," the computer's voice informed her in a monotone. "Database match, Juno Steel. Occupation: private detective. Location on file: Hyperion City, Mars. Current location —"

"Unknown," Sasha said in unison with the machine, and frowned. "Yes, I noticed."

"Please contact Director Wire at once with your inquiries regarding this individual," the comm finished. At the same time, the private line at Sasha's hip pinged with an automatic flag.

She sighed, moved to the next sample. Scraped another bit of red up from the soil and fed it to the machine. This one took longer to process.

"Blood, human," it began, and then hummed for a long moment. "No database match found."

"What."

"No database match found."

"Yes, I heard that. It doesn't make sense." She scooped up a second sample.

"Blood, human. No database match found."

Sasha frowned. Tried one more sample.

"Blood, ancient Martian. No database match found."

"Oh, Juno," she scowled, staring hopelessly down at the screen. "What _have_ you done?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All warnings listed on ch1 apply; shit gets real here, so please see endnotes for specific content warnings for this chapter.

**ASPERATA—PRESENT DAY**

Wind howled, snow flew, and two figures huddled together beneath the slim beam of light cast by a streetlamp above the designated meeting point.

Juno dragged the scarf up and clapped his hand over the lower half of his face. At first he had been horrified by the weather in the capital city of Asperata; now, he was simply baffled as he imagined people carving out entire lives here in the cold. He pressed his lips together, twisting his expression behind the fabric. The wind stung against his exposed cheeks, flecks of snow flying like shards of glass, and there was grit on his lips where there used to be a smooth gloss. 

“You’ve  _ got _ to be kidding me.”

“Darling? Are you —“

“My lipgloss fucking froze!” he blurted.

“…Juno?”

The shock was starting to wear off, and Juno grimaced. “I wore lipgloss just for you, and I think it fucking froze to my face.”

Peter sighed. “I did notice your cosmetic choices, and was waiting for a moment to say something. You chose a lovely shimmer.”

“And then I tried to lick my lips to get rid of it, and  _ that  _ froze too,” Juno continued, scowling. “This planet can eat my entire ass. I just decided.”

“Oh, no. Darling, would you like me to warm your lips up for you?”

“I don’t need your pity smooches, Nureyev.”

The thief shrugged mildly, his eyes bright with mirth as he adjusted his scarf. It fell at a flattering angle when he lifted his gloved hand away, the fabric framing his pointed face elegantly. He grinned, showing those sharp teeth. “Well, do let me know if you change your mind. The offer stands.”

“Mars used to be much colder, you know,” came a female voice from behind them. Juno turned.

Doctor Bronze was a taller woman than Juno had expected, towering over him and nearly on eye level with Nureyev. She had a thick, warm cape draped over her wide shoulders and her dark hair wound up in a knot at the top of her head. Loose strands floated down around her square face, and her eyes glinted green as bottle glass while she evaluated the two of them. “Humanity attempted to terraform the planet upon arrival, and changed it dramatically. Surviving records indicate surface temperatures used to reach as low as 120 degrees Kelvin. Of course, the early colonizers didn’t understand planetary ecology in the slightest, and their rather crude attempts to bring the surface of the planet into a more habitable range created the desert world that you know today.” She sniffed, extending a hand towards Juno. “Doctor Evangeline Bronze. Wonderful to meet you in person, I’m sure.”

Nureyev seemed to realize Juno wasn’t going to move, and shifted forward to accept the outstretched hand himself. “It’s excellent to see you again. Let me introduce my associate, Detective Juno Steel.”

“Yes, I’ve been looking forward to meeting him,” Doctor Bronze said, giving Juno a scrutinizing look. “You’re in a rather unique situation, Mister Steel, and I look forward to discussing it in great detail.”

Juno didn’t like it; suddenly, he wanted to run. It was only Nureyev’s arm, solid around his waist, which stopped him from pivoting on a heel and bolting.

Well, that and the weather. He was sure nothing would mess up a quick getaway quite like turning an ankle on the slick, icy sidewalk.

“Relax,” she said sharply, turning away and gesturing over her shoulder for them to follow. “Your partner warned me that you would be—oh, what was the word he used?  _ Petulant _ ?”

“That sounds like something he’d say,” Juno muttered, falling into cautious step behind her. Snow crunched beneath his boots as they crossed the campus quad, and he winced. Despite himself he reached out, feeling his mind uncurl outwards like a tentative tendril of smoke. 

Nureyev’s thoughts came to him first, familiar now, a constant whirl of angles and identities, motives and escape plans.  _ Trinity Papillion _ , for starters—Juno could feel the stories that built that name bubble to the surface as Nureyev rifled through the identity’s history like an academic with a file folder. Trinity was a hacker who plied his skills with computers and imagined university connections to pose as a research assistant in a lab that needed to dissect ancient technology. After filtering the needed information towards Miasma, he accepted a pretend job offer elsewhere and left the lab with little notice. Still, despite everything, Trinity Papillion had secured a glowing letter of recommendation from Doctor Bronze, and she had answered his request for assistance without hesitation. Nureyev was proud of that point; Juno resisted the urge to snort, and expanded his focus outwards.

Doctor Bronze had a head like a brick wall, dense and layered with blocks of information that were woven thickly together to support each other, building always upwards; at the moment her thoughts were a nearly impenetrable swirl, focused entirely on Juno. There— _ the image of a brain scan, with that thing clear as day, the contours of it interesting precisely because they had somehow managed to adapt to human anatomy which meant—there, the timeline of the Martian extinction event, millennia before human contact was even a possibility they would have considered—therefore, if Trinity’s theorizing on the asexual reproduction of the Martian species held true, that would imply a degree of flexibility in the genetic structures to account for random mutation due to the radiation — _

Juno gave up at that point, chromosomes flashing in a dizzying array behind his eyelids. It was all very theoretical, and nowhere in the flurry of Doctor Bronze’s mind was there any intent to do Juno any harm. He supposed that should have made him feel better, but the clinical detachment was somehow  _ worse _ .

She stopped in front of a small office space at the end of a boxy string of buildings. For a university campus it looked oddly clinical, all silver siding and sleek chrome. Solar panels gleamed in the dark along the roof, and a small plaque beside the door gave her name. She pressed her key fob to the panel below the plaque; it lit up green and the door opened with a pneumatic hiss. She gestured the two of them inside. A swirl of snow followed them onto the mat, and Nureyev and Doctor Bronze both stamped their boots on the mat to clear them of snow. Juno mimicked the motion, glancing around the room as the lights overhead clicked on.

Juno hadn’t been certain what he was expecting from the academic’s research headquarters, but the cluttered space in front of him wasn’t exactly it. The doctor still used physical paper and pens, bound volumes lining shelves that groaned beneath the weight and loose sheets fluttering at the edges when the breeze from the open door touched them. Several computer stations were set up, and on a couple of tables shoved to the far end of the room sat various Martian implements and tools. Juno’s attention was caught by a clay impression that bore a stylistic resemblance to the Mask of Grimpotheuthis, though the design was different around the edges. It made him feel uneasy, and he cast his gaze around the lab again. Doctor Bronze settled behind a large wooden desk, gesturing for Juno to take a seat opposite her.

Nureyev crossed to a computer terminal in the corner, tapping lightly at the keys. His glasses had fogged from the warmth; his face looked even more angular without them, and he muttered to himself as he paused typing to clear them against his sleeve. “You left my log-in credentials,” he said, voice light with surprise as he perched the spectacles back on his nose.

Doctor Bronze sighed. “Well, when my technical support left on such short notice, I couldn’t get in there to revoke them. Now, Mister Steel, why don’t you tell me what happened to you. From the beginning, if you please.”

He rolled his eyes, ignoring the stab of pain behind his right eye that accompanied the motion. “Well, doc, I’d say my issues started when I was around two or so —“

“Mister Steel. Please. I’m trying to help you. Begin with your first encounter with the Martian artefacts.”

Juno cast a glance to Nureyev, who met his eyes and nodded slowly. The thief’s thoughts sharpened to a honed edge, a deliberate message carried silently across the room:  _ I have no reason to distrust her. _

Juno lifted an eyebrow silently, his scepticism clear.  __

_ Even if we do not trust her, she is our best source of information, and she’s already made it clear she can’t act without the teleporter to hone in on the gene sequence. That’s why we came here first. Play along,  _ Peter recommended, his thoughts settling into order.

Juno sighed, rocking on the back two legs of his chair. “Fine,” he said, and began to tell his story.

* * *

Juno spoke for a long time. Occasionally the doctor would interrupt with questions about the artefacts he’d encountered, the physical experiences from the pill, or the readings that had already been taken on it. He glazed over their final encounter with Miasma automatically; Peter was somewhat grateful for that. He still hadn’t entirely processed those weeks underground, himself. Even now, they felt like a bad dream. Like something that had happened to somebody else.

Which was strange. They had happened to him more intensely than most things did—they had happened to Peter Nureyev.  _ That _ was something he was still wrapping his head around.

“The cafeteria should still be open,” he said at a lull in the conversation. “I’ll get us something warm to drink. Do try to not burn the lab down while I’m gone, detective.”

His feet remembered the way across the campus quad, tracing footsteps in the fresh fallen snow. He crossed to the small mess building, and he let himself in gently. Collected the coffees from a tired-looking student with blue in her hair and dark circles around her eyes, leaving an obscenely large tip in the glass jar by the till.

And began the journey back. This was all happening on autopilot, tracing the steps back through a life he’d known before. Trinity Papillion felt both far away and achingly close, though Nureyev was slightly worried by his inability to slip directly into that person’s head. He couldn’t remember some of the habits he had chosen, the finer quirks of movement or shifts of speech. Couldn’t bury himself inside somebody else’s life, not entirely.

_ It’s because I’m Peter Nureyev now _ , he thought, and then clamped down on it firmly. No point in dwelling on that.

There was a movement on the opposite rooftop. Peter stopped in the snow, feeling his frozen breath swirl around his head, and squinted. His hand drifted automatically to one of the knives hidden at his side, and he stood still in the shadow of the building.

Another flash of color. And then, a bright glare. Something metallic.

This was bad. Peter Nureyev set the tray of coffees down on the edge of a plinth and broke into a run.

* * *

“Why are you working here, doc?” Juno asked. He was sitting sideways in the chair now, his feet up in the air and his elbows resting against the side of the chair. Doctor Bronze seemed to have not noticed the shift, as absorbed as she was in unravelling his story.

“Your planet is stunning, but I find a degree of detachment from it helps with my work. And why Asperata? Simple. There’s funding here. And, on a more obtuse level, I suppose being in a desert of a different kind is helpful with…. _ conceptualizing  _ my work. The ancient Martians had a landscape of extremes, of vastness emptiness and open hostility. They had to rely on each other to survive. I enjoy being able to step outside the city and feel exactly as small as they must have, staring at the Martian sky.”

Juno felt a sick drop in his stomach, a half-remembered nightmare dredging itself up to surface in his head.  _ We don’t know what it must be like to be alone inside our head _ , said the little stab of pain behind his eye.  _ We don’t know how to be anything less than a WE. _

And then, with a pulling ache that left a bitter taste in his mouth, the Martian memories coalesced into something that felt like anger.  _ Maybe if we had, we would not have — _

“Mister Steel? You’re bleeding.” Doctor Bronze leaned forwards, offering a tissue. “Your eye. That’s interesting. Is that something that happens oft—“

Several things happened at once.

Peter burst the door open, his eyes wide and his movements precise as he launched himself towards the terminal. “We’ve got to go, we’ve been followed,” he announced, tapping quickly at the keyboard. “Juno, grab your coat. Doctor Bronze, you need to —“

Glass shattered. Something crashed while something else flared white hot and painful; Juno caught the flash of a plasma fire out of the corner of his eye and threw himself over the desk, trying to take the doctor down out of the line of fire.

It was too late, and he knew it before he saw the burn through the middle of Doctor Bronze’s forehead.

Juno  _ felt  _ it more than saw it, even, the echo of the injury ripped across his own skull with all the fury and precision of the original plasma burn, arcing like lightning through his brain. His mind went white hot from the force of it, and — _ — _ the link to her in his brain fizzled, and sputtered, and went abruptly—hollowly—awfully—completely  _ dead _ .

He realized, in an instant that strung itself out through an eternity, what an awful thing it must have been for the Martians, all together, to feel each other die.  _ You’ll feel it in your every cell,  _ somebody had said to him once.

Had they known? Would they still have chosen—no, the edge of the abyss was rearing up fast, and it was all Juno could do to stem the tide. To not sink entirely beneath it. He struggled, grappled, fought. Distant voices rang through him with all the clarity and purpose of a thousand bells.

And then they went silent, and that was infinitely worse.

No time, to the outside world, had passed.

Juno saw in slow motion as Nureyev vaulted over the desk, all grace and precision. And then Juno realized he had hit the ground with Doctor Bronze still in his arms. Realized he didn’t know that from feeling his own body; rather, it was Peter’s concern that echoed through to him. Peter’s evaluation of the scene, the lines of fire, the threat—the open window—the blood—should have known—Juno—oh,  _ Juno _ —oh,  _ gods _ . Juno’s eyes were both wide, flecks of blood shining crimson bright against the whites of his right eye, pupils slit to pinpricks. For a crystalline moment the detective could see himself reflected in his lover’s mind, a fractured mirror that showed something not entirely human.

And then he didn’t see anything else. The eye of the hurricane moved slowly, inexorably, through the back of his brain. He thought his head was going to explode, the pain turning sharp and precious in the sudden calm. When his body gave up on remaining conscious, he was grateful.

Juno’s last thought was a desperate, fervent hope that Nureyev would be alright.  _ I’m sorry I let you down, Nureyev _ , he thought, and then his entire mental landscape flared red.

* * *

**MARS—LONG AGO**

_ You were right, you know. About why we built the bomb. _

_ We had no space to breathe, not trapped beneath the weight of us. We were a multitude and we were one, and we were endlessly together, and we were alone in the thick of it. _

_ But then, humans are like this, too. They see pieces of themselves in fragments or whispers, glimpses divorced from the whole just enough to make them unrecognizable, and what then? A stranger in the crowd, tugging at the hem of an ill-fitting dress. A face in a windowpane, absent and unkind as it surveys a sleeping lover on the other side of the room. A brush of hair against a face, and it carries an unwanted scent. A finger on the trigger of the gun, and only then you realize that the nail has been peeled to the quick. All of it is you; none of it is anywhere close to who you want to be.  _

_ You are human and that means you see yourself again, and again, and again. You are a magnifying glass, an echo chamber, an abstract work of art that has turned, through repetition and carelessness, into nothing more than noise. _

_ We, too, were exactly that. _

_ Is it any wonder we broke the mirror? You feel that impulse, too. You struggle with it, and you tell yourself that you don’t. You want to let go, fall softly into the dark, be done with the hurting and let it all slide away.  _

_ You’re tired. You’ve been tired as long as you can remember, and sometimes it feels like every part of you aches only for rest without end. _

_ But the only thing stronger than the ability to drown in that abyss is the kicking screaming aching need to breathe. You can’t help it. You feel it even though your tired human mind wishes, sometimes, that you wouldn’t. We understand that. We built what hope we could, even as we built the bomb. We grew more of ourselves, spread outwards and wore ourselves thin, hoping that each new angle on the mirror, each new shard to the kaleidoscope, would have something better to offer. Would see something different, if only we could keep twisting the angles and viewing ourselves again through new light. But it was never enough—we could not see ourselves clearly. _

_ Can you? _

_ We failed, Juno Steel. Look out to the horizon of a broken red planet, and know the shifting red sands cover us. That the planet covers me, and I am alone. _

* * *

 

**ASPERATA - PRESENT DAY**

If anybody had asked him later exactly how he got them out of that scrape, Peter Nureyev wouldn’t have been able to give an entirely accurate account. He saw Juno fall, stained with the both literal and metaphysical brain matter of their best lead on the Martian tech. He saw the open window and, on the rooftop across the campus quad, the flash of Natalia’s red hair from a sniper’s vantage.

He pressed himself out of line of sight. That particular moment in time was exceedingly clear, his back pressed to the cool surface of the wall as his hand traced the edge of Juno’s chin delicately, searching desperately for a pulse beneath his slender fingers.

The lady was alive.

Something fluttered to the ground beside him, launched into the office on a projectile. A small note, handwritten in a steady cursive. An address. A time. Below it, a short message:

 

_ Juno Steel. Rowan King. I have a proposition. We should talk.  _

_          —NS _

 

Everything after that was a matter of mechanics. Peter Nureyev escaped with an unconscious Juno Steel in tow, and he covered their tracks because that was one of the things he knew how to do very, very well. Nobody fired at him as he carried his partner out. He escaped before campus police could arrive.

And the note sat heavy in his pocket.

* * *

For Juno, regaining consciousness on a soft surface in an unfamiliar room, it felt something like a miracle.

He said as much in a fragmented daze, and Peter responded with one of those low chuckles of his. It was a sound that wasn’t exactly laughter, the kind of sound that came out of a throat when nothing was funny at all but some kind of response was expected all the same. Juno could feel that, the psychic pressure behind his right eye blurring his vision as Peter’s mingled relief and concern flooded over him. It was damn near enough to make the lady want to crawl out of his skin, being  _ cared  _ about so damn much.

They were in another hotel room, this one furnished in soft yellows and hints of burgundy.  _ More red, _ thought Juno dully as his mind began to return to him, and he knew that the color was somehow important even if he couldn’t remember exactly why. He shoved himself up off the bed, wincing down at the sticky mess his own blood had left on the pillow.  _ Red _ almost didn’t seem like a real colour anymore, in the same way that a word repeated ad infinitum came to lose meaning. “Guess we’re not getting that damage deposit back,” he muttered.

Nureyev lifted an eyebrow. “You seem to have that effect on soft furnishings. Have you considered, perhaps, maybe keeping more of your blood inside your body? It’d save everybody a great deal of trouble.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The room tilted wildly around him, and he swallowed down the nauseous lump in his throat. “I need a drink,” he announced.

Peter’s eyebrows knit themselves down into an expression of concern, but he said nothing as Juno crossed determinedly to the mini-bar in the corner of the room. He rummaged through it, selecting a small bottle of whiskey and carrying it to the window.

“She wants to meet with us,” Nureyev said quietly. “Snow. I’m certain she let us go on purpose.”

“Well, that was nice of her.”

Peter’s laugh was hollow, bursting out of him just once. “I don’t like it. But she knows your name, and that creates liability. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d already moved some of her own forces back to Hyperion City, in case we run. And she wouldn’t have given us an opportunity to arrange contingencies, cover our own backs, if she meant overt harm—not when she could have stunned us both back there, and taken us by force without anybody being aware of it. I’m not saying we just waltz in there. But I’m….suggesting...we don’t dismiss the possibility out of hand.”

Juno was exhausted. Doctor Bronze’s last moments rang through him like the after-echo of a bell, more vibration than sound, a feeling in the back of his head and a taste lingering in his mouth that no amount of alcohol could drown out. Still, he figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to try. He took a sip of it, feeling it burn. Behind him, he could feel Nureyev wishing that he could read Juno’s mind. His teeth clenched.

“We don’t have to do any of this, you know,” the thief said finally. He had shifted to lay on his back on the bed, his hands folded into a pillow behind his head, watching Juno at the window. “The teleporter may be the cleanest shot at getting that...thing...out of your head, but it’s far from our only option. We can look elsewhere. If you need to go back to Mars…” He softened, eyes gently tracing the outline of Juno’s silhouette by the window. “We can do that, too, Juno. We can work it out. We can do whatever you need.”

"No.”

“No?”

Juno was silent for a long moment, staring out at the snowflakes that drifted past the window. They danced and blew, carried on the wind as easily as desert sand. He raised the bottle to his lips and drank deep from it before speaking, “…You don't know what it's like, Nureyev. Being trapped. Only two of us ever really made it out of Oldtown and Sasha doesn't even count—no matter where she started out, she was going to end up somewhere big."

"And you?"

"…You have no idea how much it would mean to people, just knowing this tech exists! Knowing that you could take one step—any step—and end up anywhere in the universe. That you could give yourself as many fresh starts as you need. Just having that tech out there would be so....” Juno trailed off, his mouth closing and twisting before he blurted, “We can't all just  _ disappear _ , Nureyev!"

"You're partly right, detective. I take it as a point of professional pride that I don’t know a thing about being trapped.” Peter hummed under his breath, staring up at the whirling fan blades. “But…”

"But?"

“But I think I might know a thing or two about places like that. And tearing yourself apart for them doesn’t tend to end well.”

"So, why are you going along with this?"

"That's Peter Nureyev for you. He seems to be drawn towards people who believe that a better world isn’t the one on the opposite horizon. That it doesn’t exist out there, and so we must forge it into being  _ here _ .” He spread his hands out wide in front of him now, framing the ceiling fan with his outstretched fingers. “It’s not the teleporter itself you’re after. If I may be so bold, Juno, I think what you’re searching for out here is  _ hope _ .”

The words hung in the air for a long moment.

“Maybe you’re right,” Juno finally relented. “Hell if I can tell right now. I just—I think I need to be alone for a little bit.”

“Will you be safe on your own right now?” Nureyev asked gently, swinging his feet down to touch toes lightly to the carpet.

Juno nodded, and then forced himself to speak. “I will….Peter. I just—shit, I’m  _ tired _ .”

“Juno?”

“I just need  _ rest _ . To take a  _ break _ from —“ He waved a hand in the vicinity of his own head, and sighed. “I won’t leave the room, I won’t do anything stupid, I’ll even leave my comm on if it makes you feel better. I just need a break.”

“I understand.” Peter stepped forward, wrapping his arms gently around Juno’s waist. He kissed the back of Juno’s neck, burying his face for a moment in the scent of his lady’s hair. And then he slipped away, the hotel door closing silently behind him.

Juno stayed where he was, watching the snow swirl down until the bottle was empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: violence, firearms, blood, dissociation, eye scream, character death, suicidal ideation, alcohol abuse, and coping badly with trauma.
> 
> Take care of yourselves, loves. <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See CWs at end of chapter.

**ASPERATA—PRESENT DAY**

There was no music in this town square, and Peter Nureyev suspected there rarely—if ever—was. He moved lightly between the shadows, keeping out of the direct glow of street lamps more out of habit than any particular design, and tried to steady his breathing. Clear his mind, even.

It was a touch harder than usual. He thought, in an oddly cynical kind of way, that there was only so much _meditation upon command_ that a person could be asked to do before the entire endeavour became futile. He ducked into a small cafe for respite from the cold, one of the few warmly lit windows on the square. Snow drifted on the windowsills and it stung pinprick sharp against his exposed skin; Nureyev snuggled deeper into his scarf as he pushed the door open. It was a small coffee shop in a large chain, homey atmosphere, a smell of coffee and vanilla that was the same everywhere in the galaxy. A barista greeted him warmly, asked for an order, and he provided one without thinking too hard.

"And can I grab your name for the cup?"

"Of course. It's—it's Pe —“ he began, and then choked. “Rowan."

For a moment there, just a fleeting and dangerous heartbeat, the name _Peter_ had almost jumped automatically to his tongue. He frowned down at his hand, tracing the burn across the back of it with a lazy swipe of his thumb as the register hummed and processed the payment for the drink. That wasn't like him at all. _Get a grip, Nureyev,_ he thought, and the petulant scolding voice in his head sounded alarmingly like Juno.

Well, that was the root of the problem now, wasn't it? Juno Steel and his legion of ghosts. Ghosts of a planet. Ghosts of a city. Ghosts of a life left behind. Peter Nureyev supposed he had his own ghosts, too, and was only just beginning to crack the surface of the ice he’d encased them in so long ago. Ghosts of a thousand identities were strewn out behind him, suddenly made paper thin and transparent when pulled up to surface and held to the light, becoming real only when examined against the backdrop of his truth. _Peter Nureyev._

The word for it, he supposed, was _haunted_. It wasn't a word he liked very much.

"Mocha for Rowan!" called up at the bar. He moved mechanically over to the counter and collected his drink, took it back to his table, and stared out the window.

_Enough_. This pensive interlude wasn't helpful for anybody. Nureyev closed his hand around the cup and took a thoughtful sip. It tasted something like chocolate, even if it was not quite right. Every planet had its own trademarked and patented substitutes for the stuff—cocoa production was ever so finicky, making it both obscenely expensive and the source of a wonderful black market for those so inclined to turn a quick profit (and Nureyev himself had been among them, more than once before). On Asperata, the sim-choc was fairly close in taste to the real thing, and it had an equally satisfying warm weight in his stomach.

When he was finished with the drink, he knew, he would head back to the hotel. Juno would still be there, sleeping it off. Peter would tend to him, and sift through Evangeline Bronze’s research for anything useful, and that would be that.

And that was a plan. Plans were good. Thank all the gods for small blessings, or something of the sort. Even in his head, it was hard to make the words sound sincere.

* * *

**MARS, PRESENT DAY**

Rita had done the security on Juno’s apartment herself. Sasha was sceptical at first, but after seeing the complicated series of mechanisms and systems that Rita bypassed with her tablet, she was slightly more convinced.

“You sure are…thorough,” she noted.

Rita shrugged, replacing her tablet inside the voluminous collection of scarves that she’d folded into both accessory and bag. “Mista Steel isn’t always great at taking care of himself, so sometimes I gotta help out. Now that you’ve got all your secret agent stuff to be getting to, I’m going to head back to the office and check on—uh, things! Yeah. Real important things. Like clients! And—and paperwork! And then maybe if I’ve got time, you know, just a little of it, I’ll sneak a peek to make sure my streams are gettin’ recorded all proper, but definitely only after my work is _done_!” She folded her arms across her chest, breathless.

Sasha was not going to argue. Instead, she crossed the threshold into the apartment alone. She was holding her breath in spite of herself, and released it slowly. Deliberately, she drew another gulp of air deep into her belly, trying to calm her adrenal system. _It’s just an apartment, there’s nothing to be afraid of_ . _You’re still jumpy from that tomb—get over it, you’re not a child, there’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark._

Truth was, she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to know how her former friend had been living all these years. If their few encounters were anything to go by, _not well_ would be a generous estimate. She thought back to the scattered reports she’d had routed to her in a moment of weakness, _“Just to know if he’s still alive out there_.” As far as she could tell, the answer was that the lady had survived this long clinging to his usual combination of luck, ego, and stubbornness. It…wasn’t reassuring.

The kitchen was small, the living room sparse. She took another of those deep belly breaths, trying to approach the space in the same way she would any other crime scene.

Juno clearly didn’t spend much time at home. That much was obvious from the empty spots on the shelves and the lack of personal décor around the space. The kitchen was stocked with staples—sauces, grains, and a vast array of spices—but lacking in fresh produce. She supposed that was a good thing, as it meant there hadn’t been much to go rotten in the weeks since the lady had vanished. She remembered, suddenly, that Juno had always liked to cook. Had always been able to make himself at home in a kitchen, regardless of who owned it or how it was set up. For a moment she could see it so clearly, him and Mick bickering over the stove in her father’s apartment. Mick had burned his fingers as he snuck a pancake directly from the hot plate and then spent the rest of the morning whining about it. Sasha herself had been barely able to look away from the wide array of study materials she’d spread out over the kitchen table in her father’s apartment, letting the voices and laughter of her friends wash into the background. And there _had_ been laughter, in those days—infrequent, sure, but it had happened all the same.

She shook her head with a frown. It wouldn’t do to dwell.

A cursory search of the apartment turned up fairly little of interest. If Juno had been involved in anything illegal prior to vanishing into the desert, he clearly hadn’t kept the evidence at home.

She didn’t need to see anything more, and locked the door behind her as she left.

* * *

**ASPERATA, PRESENT DAY**

Juno had stolen Peter’s sunglasses, the large tinted lenses hiding bloodshot eyes. He hunched over inside his coat, one thumb tracing the silver patterns in the embroidery on the other sleeve, wincing at noise. Peter’s heart twisted in empathy as they walked. It was not as cuttingly cold now as it had been yesterday; the snowfall had stopped, and the sky above their heads was a dusty shade of rose.

"Hmm. Juno, did I ever tell you about the time I joined a cult?"

"Only one?” Juno responded automatically, sarcasm as instinctive to him as breathing. “Find that hard to believe."

"Oh, please. You know I lack the attention span for situations where everybody is supposed to be the same. It's all reciting chants and wearing horribly unflattering robes and singing the praises of deities that most certainly don't care much for the flattery. _And_ it took ages for my hair to grow back out."

"Well, there's the real crime. Bad fashion."

"It was a very particular aesthetic," Nureyev agreed, "and not one that suited me all that well. Hard to imagine it suiting anybody."

"Was there a point to this story?"

"Yes, actually. You remember, I've studied Martian hieroglyphics? The particular group I'd infiltrated had a knack for, let's say, _borrowing_ pieces of symbolism and language from dead cultures across the galaxy. They'd made quite a soup of it, and I spent more time untangling that than on any other aspect of that job."

"Other than growing back your hair, you mean."

"Naturally. It was a lot of work for very little reward—unless you count information, itself, as a worthy goal. Juno, after you lost consciousness I was able to upload her research. I’ve been going through it.” He pulled a tablet out from the bag at his hip and handed it over. “Look here, at these symbols Doctor Bronze had focused on. The engravings at the base of the teleporter pad—what we've got here is not actually Martian. It looks similar enough that a layperson might not notice, but look here, and here, and here. It's a language of similar etymology, but entirely different syntax. She was certain of it, and so am I.”

Juno flicked through the images, scanning them quickly. “Which means….?”

“You tell me, Detective.”

Juno’s stomach dropped. “Natalia Snow isn’t after Martian tech at all. She’s got a bigger fish on the line. She’d only bother killing Doctor Bronze if she needed to keep it silent that the teleporters came from somewhere else; nobody else would have figured that out.”

“Trade secrets are serious business,” Nureyev confirmed, casting a sideways glance at Juno. “If whoever created this technology was able to do it millennia ago, who knows what they’ve come up with since then?”

“They could be dead,” Juno said, and then grimaced. A starburst of pain exploded behind his right eye, and he clenched his teeth. “ _Calm the hell down_ ,” he hissed, feeling the Martian minds stretch in frantic response.

“Or they could be alive, and the reason why the Martians chose such a broad scope when programming biological compatibility of the pill. Juno, we need to talk about this,” Nureyev said softly, reaching forward to touch the detective’s arm with gloved fingers. “What’s happening to you…it’s getting worse.”

“It’s fine, Nureyev.”

“You were talking in your sleep last night.”

“Oh, damn, you caught me practicing my stand-up comedy routine.”

“If it’s meant to be funny, darling, it needs some serious work.”

“Tough crowd. huh."

* * *

 And so Juno decided that he would meet with Natalia Snow, as requested, but he would not go in unprepared.

The capsule was small, grey in colour, and coated in a thick plastic. It came with an applicator, and installing it was no big deal. A swab with an alcohol wipe and then a quick injection into his bicep. Done. Juno figured that was as good as he was going to get.

He didn’t like the way it sat under his skin, didn’t like thinking about it, didn’t want to dwell on it. But the rare and rational voice inside his head told him it was necessary all the same. Juno remembered those hopeless days alone in the dark of the tomb, after Nureyev had left. If he was being entirely honest with himself, Juno hadn’t even noticed when Peter’s own nightmares had started to encroach upon him. And though Nureyev had come back for him—he had returned—it had been so, so close. Juno felt like he’d already used up his allotment of miracles, of _good things_ , of impossible escapes. Next time, he was certain, he wouldn’t be so lucky. And so he sat down on the edge of the bed and dropped his head into his hands. Breathed out slow, between clenched teeth, and tried to tell the aching in his head to settle down.

"Juno? Do I—want to know what you're doing?" came Peter's voice from the doorway, teetering on alarm. _Ah, damn_.

The detective shrugged, flexing his arm to feel how the capsule sat now. It ached a little, but no more than an annual flu jab would have. "Friend at Saffron sent it to me on short notice, I don't understand the chemistry junk so don't bother asking. All I need to know is that it's harmless unless it gets cracked into and the insides come in contact with saliva, and then it's quick and painless. But I need to know it's there."

"But—why on earth would you need such a thing? Surely there's easier ways to take down an adversary, in a pinch?"

Juno frowned, looking up at Peter slowly. "It's....not for an adversary."

"...Oh. Oh, Juno!"

"Don't look at me like that. Do you honestly think Miasma is the only person in the universe who would happily lock me in a dark room, poke and prod and torture me until my Martian brain-worm's got nothing else left to give, and I don't know who I am, and all I've got to look forward to is maybe being allowed to die after I've been wrung out like a sponge? No, no thank you, I'll take a hard pass on that one."

"I would never let that happen to you!"

"Because sure, the galaxy is gonna make sure it asks you first!"

"Juno, you're being ridiculous! You are perfectly safe! I don't understand why you —"

Juno snapped. He wasn’t sure exactly what, in that sentence, pushed him over the edge—but his voice came out raw and cracked, and he had lost all control over his own volume by the time he finished, "Because sometimes—damn it all, _sometimes a lady needs to know it's possible to make this whole goddamn ride stop_!"

Peter froze.

Juno realized he'd clenched both hands into fists, his voice raw and his forearm aching.

For a long moment they stared each other down, neither willing to give an inch.

Nureyev looked away first, and his voice was suddenly, horribly, _achingly_ soft. "Oh, Juno..."

"Don’t look at me like that." Juno folded his arms.

" _Juno_."

"Look, Nureyev. Just because I want to make sure I can do it on my own terms when the gig is up, doesn't mean I'm gonna rush out and do it tomorrow. Doesn't mean I'm not gonna fight my damnedest to survive. Not about to throw myself in front of a firing squad —"

"Or swallow an untested pharmaceutical from a species that died out thousands of years ago? Or lock yourself in with a Martian superweapon? Or drink yourself halfway to a coma? Or throw your mind in with a dying woman’s head? _Or try to find yourself a cold ditch?_ ” Peter sank against the wall behind him. “It was one of the first things you ever said to me.”

“Oh, don’t _be_ like that! This thing isn’t in your head, Nureyev! You don’t get to tell me how to carry it!” In that moment, Juno wasn’t certain if he was talking about the Martians or about…something else, that other thing he’d carried with him all his life, the one that definitely lived inside his head but was a whole lot harder to trace or name. The one that pulsed in time with the sorrow that traced itself into deep cracks along the Martian landscape. It didn’t seem to matter much. The premise was the same.

"By all the gods.” Peter drew himself up right, like he was gearing for a fight, but then sagged in utter defeat. "I should have seen this so much sooner. Juno....Juno. I'm so, so sorry.  I've been failing you this whole time."

Juno felt the vein in his temple pulse. "Nureyev, it's not a huge deal. Everybody has causes they'd die for, and things they're not willing to live through. That's how people work. I’m just—look. I’m just covering my bases here. That’s all."

The thief spun on his heel, crossing the room to his suitcase, now full of purpose. Began slowly and deliberately folding up the dinner jacket that lay across the foot of the bed, his slender fingers creasing the fabric into sharp lines. "That settles that, then."

"What are you doing?"

"Packing. We're leaving on the first shuttle out. It's not worth it. None of this is."

"What—oh, for heaven's sake, don't be so melodramatic. Just because I'm —"

Peter whirled to him, his face an impassive mask. "We're out, Detective. We're done with this. We’ll find another way to save your life—I’m not meeting a master criminal with your mental status in question."

"Nureyev..."

"Did it ever occur to you—just maybe, with those amazing deductive skills of yours—that the one thing I'm not willing to live through is losing you?"

“I’m not a liability, Nureyev! We’re doing this. Either you’re coming with me, or I’m going in alone.”

“Fine,” Peter spat, and then took a deep breath. “Fine. Get your coat, then. I’ll be in the car.”

* * *

Snow’s office on Asperata was tall, and it glittered. Frost hung suspended on sheets of fine glass; the sun caught the laced ice, and reflected brightly enough to make Juno’s already aching head want to tear itself apart. The receptionist greeted them politely and gave chipper instructions. It all felt...alarmingly legitimate.

She met them in a meeting room, nondescript. A kettle sat untouched in the corner, various flavors of tea arranged on a tray around it. Soft chairs were arranged around an asymmetrical table. She was wearing a fur stole, and her hands were folded on the table.

“Martians are ghost stories,” she began, gesturing for them to sit. Both Peter and Juno remained standing. “Or, well, they _were_ ghost stories. They haven’t exactly stayed that way lately, have they?” She shook her head. “The mess with the DiMaggio family, to begin with.”

“Why are we here, Snow?” Juno asked, his arms folded.

“I need partners in this. Evangeline Bronze….didn’t share my point of view. Still, perhaps that’s for the best. You seem much more...discreet. Or, at least, less inclined towards publishing your findings. I didn’t want to kill her, but she left me no choice.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard academia can be murder,” Juno quipped.

She rocked back on her heels. “And there’s another thing. Perhaps, you might have noticed, the Martians were...particular...about their genetic heritage.”

“They were all genetically identical, you mean,” Nureyev said

“Yes. That.” She stamped a heeled shoe to the ground, sharp. “Bronze surmised that’s why I can’t get the damn teleporter to work.”

Juno frowned. That didn’t make any sense. Given the wide compatibility of the Martian pill, knowing the sheer variety of animal and alien minds he was able to receive, having only one piece of tech self-limiting to Martian usage felt _off_ , somehow. A theory was beginning to take shape inside his mind, but he—at least—still had the luxury of keeping his thoughts to himself. Of course Miasma could use the damn thing—she’d even had one in her lair. Maybe that was even why she’d tried so hard to implant herself with Martian genetic material in the first place, and then it’d gotten out of hand. Out of tentacle, even.

Juno’s face twisted into a mocking grin. “Have you checked for an instruction manual? Tried turning it off and on again? Called up your IT department to check if maybe the router needs —”

“This isn’t a joke!”

“Phew, glad I can drop it. I’d just about reached the end of my technical knowledge, I was really just repeating stuff I’ve heard from my secretary.”

“And then _you_ got in contact with the doctor, and _she_ showed me what you’ve got inside your head. So I told her to lure you in. Promise help.”

Juno froze. Peter tensed beside him, his hand slipping into his coat.

“Relax. I don’t want to hurt you. I just... Think maybe, just maybe, I should show you the vault,” Natalia said, composed again and rising elegantly from her seat. “I can’t help you, Juno Steel. But maybe when you see it with your own two eyes, and with that _thing_ you’ve got living behind them, you’ll change your mind and decide to help me.”

* * *

Natalia hit a couple buttons on the door panel; from a distance, Juno watched her. He felt the rush of adrenaline through his veins, and knew it was not entirely his own.

The door rushed open with a pneumatic hiss. Juno strained to see the room beyond. “So. Can you make it work, Steel?” Snow asked as she hit the lights.

Peter hummed under his breath. “You really don’t know my detective. He’s notoriously bad at changing his mind when he gets stuck on something, it’s quite the character flaw.”

“I wasn’t asking you, King.”

Nureyev shifted backwards on his heels, his attention focused and sharp. Juno automatically opened his mouth, but the retort died in his throat.

The chamber stretched long and blue, strip lighting casting an eerie glow over the low ceilings and organic curves. It was a sharp contrast to the sterile contours and sharp edges of the rest of the building. He wasn't fully aware of the extent of his body as he slipped past Nureyev. Juno's breath caught. It felt almost alive. For a moment, the pain behind his eye faded, too.

Everything was still, suspended.

_It remembers us_ , said the quiet voice, the one that lived in dreams. _They built us a temple_. It stirred like a sleeping cat, uncoiling.

Juno felt it _breathe_.

Nureyev was saying something. Juno couldn't make out the details, caught in a perfect dreamlike moment between the solid reality around him and the haze filtering out from the back of his head.

Before him stood a glass dome like a cathedral, a monument to the long ago faded. Beneath it, the teleporter sat quiet and dark. Juno pressed a palm to the smooth surface and closed his eyes. It was cold, even though the machine beyond it was so warm. Still so alive, though the heavy spirals of time had dulled the keenness with which it burned. Juno felt it hum, sending out points of light through the dark behind his eyelids.

" _Juno_ _‽_ " Nureyev repeated behind him, his voice rising slightly.

The thing behind Juno's eye _pulled._ Spiderweb cracks latticed out across the surface of the glass, extending slowly, purposefully out from the base of his palm. Radiating like a newborn star from each fingertip. Natalia barked a warning.

Juno didn't see it happen—he was somewhere else entirely.

An ancient voice called like a magnet to the iron in his blood, to the iron in the Martian dust, both red, both pulsing, both _alive_.

Except. One of those things was long dead, and beginning to come to terms with what that meant. He felt that sorrow, deep, bottomless, as though it was his own.

_And the world kept shifting; the sands kept blowing. In the end, it all becomes sand._

_Love was not enough to save us. You know that, too, don't you? Love for a person, for a species, for a city—it isn't enough to love. An empty vessel can hold no fire. It can sustain itself, for a time, on the fumes of others. But eventually, that mirror will always break. Is the reflection of the self worth loving? Is it enough reason to fight?_

_You ask this question, too, even if you don't want to believe that you do._

_We died, Juno Steel. We kept creating new selves in the hopes that one of them would be worthy of love, but it was futile. The more we became, the less we wanted to become. We were all hollow. The closer we looked at each other, the more we saw only that which we despised so greatly within ourselves. It was a race without end, and the only way out—the only way out was not an end, either. We are—no,_ I _am still here. I miss my other selves; I wish I had loved them more._

_Perhaps the galaxy is capable of jokes, after all._

_Come with us now, Juno Steel. We must ask you, one last time, to protect us. So we can do what must be done._

_Please._

The glass shattered.

Behind him, Peter Nureyev yelled a desperate warning. Natalia was moving in a slow-motion blur.

Something distant made a horrible sound, and then something a whole lot closer made a sound that was even worse. Juno blinked, the blurred outline of his palm coming into focus, streaked with blood. Before him, the teleporter sat open, glowing, _ready_.

He grabbed Peter by the wrist and tugged him in close, the crush of the man's body and the scent of his cologne jolting through him, solid and real. For a moment he nearly balked; but no, there was no time. There had been time once, millennia ago—that much rang crystal clear through his head as he moved. _Endless time, unbearable time_. And the alarms, those were ringing, too, telling them both that the game was entirely up.

No time.

He shoved, and Nureyev was knocked briefly off his feet sideways, landing on the pad of the teleporter machine. Peter looked up, twisted back to face the door and his lover, lithe and holding his knife, ready to fight whoever—whatever—needed to be fought. But no, this was not the place to fight.

Not here.

_Send him somewhere safe,_ Juno thought with every fibre of his being. _Everything else is a secondary concern_ , echoed another voice in agreement, and Juno couldn't tell who it sounded like. The memory of Peter's voice and the memory of a Martian regret, all twisted together.

Still, it was no matter. The machine flashed, Peter's mouth opened, frozen in his betrayed shock—and then he was gone.

Behind Juno, heavy weapons clicked. Footsteps. Shouted commands.

He moved slowly, methodically, his hands tracing over the edges of the machine. It was unfamiliar to him, and he was a complete stranger to it; it didn't know how to accept something so small and fleshy and warm as a human touch, but it reached out tentatively and Juno felt the thing inside his brain respond. Could read its intent, allowed it to use his hands to shift destination.

_Quickly, now_. The haze lifted suddenly. A choice for him to make. Allowing him that, at least, the crystal clarity to make a decision for himself.

It wasn't much of a choice at all.

Juno jumped forward into the machine.

The world flared red, bright, electric—and then completely and impossibly black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for suicidal ideation/actions, poor coping mechanisms, and dissociation.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous mental health content warnings continue to apply, including discussion of suicide and a description of a dissociative panic attack in this chapter.

**MARS, PRESENT DAY**

Peter Nureyev had seen this room before, the flurry of papers rushing around the edges of his vision as he came back to himself in the eye of a crimson hurricane. He was flat on his back, something hard pressing into his spine; the edge of Juno Steel’s desk. Slowly, the room settled back into some semblance of order. He was in the detective’s office—thin slants of artificial moonlight cut strips across the surface, illuminating the room in chunks and pieces. The thief blinked spots from his eyes, his head whirling.

The blinds hung askew. The window had been broken from the fury of his arrival. Instead of the cold scent of snow, the dusty haze of Hyperion City met his nostrils.

Peter pushed himself up, frantic. Juno had been—he spun to search the room, hoping beyond hope—but no, the detective wasn’t there. He’d shoved Nureyev into the teleporter, and now Peter Nureyev was here alone.

His heartbeat rushed in his ears, his composure fracturing.

“Mista—wait, Mista Glass?!”

Nureyev whirled, his hand going to his knife. The figure in the doorway was short, glittering with many scarves, her hair piled on the top of her head in a bouffant that made her silhouette momentarily confusing in the dark. He recognized her by voice more than sight—Juno’s secretary, Rita. Juno had sent him to her.

Cautious, he let the knife remain hidden. Juno would not have sent him into a trap. He closed his eyes for a moment, the image of his lady’s face burned into his memory with all the bright clarity of a sunspot. The wide eyes, the blood on the side of his face, the vacant gaze past Peter with a blankness that seemed to stare directly into another world and, above all else, the concern that radiated out from him. No, Juno might not have been in full control over his actions at the very last moment—Peter grimly understood that much—but he also would not have sent his lover somewhere unsafe. Peter Nureyev was as certain of that as he was of his own name.

At least Juno took care with _somebody’s_ life. It was hard to be angry at him for something Peter knew was not entirely within Juno’s control or command; all the same, a flare of something hot and bitter rose in Peter’s gut. _Oh, Juno_.

“Rita? Who’s— _you!_ ”

Clearly, Juno couldn’t have anticipated the presence of Sasha Wire in the office, nor the blaster in her hand.

The thief raised both hands slowly, displaying them as empty. “Would you even begin to believe me if I told you I could explain?”

* * *

**SOMEWHERE, SOME TIME**

It was not quite red, where Juno Steel awoke. Nor was it blue.

Juno drifted, the light of the teleporter and the chaotic rushing of a thousand winds vanishing into the slipstream behind him and fading into something much less immediate.

It took a very long time for him to become coherent enough to orient himself to these surroundings, floating in the violet expanse. He could feel, far away, the vast mechanisms of a mind that felt like staring off a cliff. It triggered a pulse of vertigo in the pit of his stomach, and he resisted reaching any further into it. _Alien_ was the first word that came to mind, and he knew immediately it was the only one that could possibly fit.

It was watching him, and he was very small beneath the intensity of its focus, but it did not seem to want to do him harm. It was more curious. And, more than curious—it felt the Martian remnants he carried. It _ached_ for them.

For the moment, that was all he needed to know.

“That’s why you made the pill,” Juno said out loud to the Martians, the bloom of pain behind his right eye radiating out in approval as the realization dawned on him. “So someday, somebody would know you’d been here. So you could tell your story to—to whoever _this_ is—and they would hear it. These are the aliens that made the teleporters just for you. They were—you were friends.”

_We needed them to know that we are sorry. We needed this to outlive us._

“That’s bullshit,” Juno muttered, rubbing at his eye.

For a long moment, there was no response save for the pain that throbbed in time with his heart. The ache felt as though it had always been a part of him, as though he couldn’t remember a single moment of his life that it had not strung itself through and around, wrapped like a cord around his throat. It was there as a child, watching Benten twirl across the kitchen floor. Woven through his mother’s voice. The skyline of Oldtown, jagged as a broken promise beneath the smooth expanse of the dome. It was sitting in Sasha Wire’s bedroom as she dyed strips of purple into her hair. In the academy, learning how to properly sight a blaster. Benten’s funeral, the closed casket. Rita’s perfume, her crushing hugs. The office, late hours and too much coffee and tired eyes. The tomb where the Martians had been born. The hotel room that night he had almost left Peter, the moon glowing silver across the pillow. The way that his lover’s face had shifted, content, in the dark. The wondering, always in the back of his mind, if he’d done the wrong thing. If that moment of selfish weakness had condemned the thief to carry a burden that nobody should have to bear. It was heavy enough for Juno, alone. Why did he get back into bed?

There was a thread of red pain that strung through Juno’s head, it radiated out through his body and bound each of his limbs, and in that moment Juno felt the Martians resonate back through his history. They knew him, and he knew them, and their sadness—their sorrow—their desire for it to _just stop hurting for one goddamn second—_ it echoed in exactly the same melody, sang the same notes, rang out the same tone. It was cut in the shape of his shame and his failure, his grief and his loneliness, and he believed he didn’t deserve for it to fit into any other form. He knew exactly how the Martians had felt, staring down the darkness past the edge of their own heads, and it was not because he could read their minds.

It was because he, too, had felt that way for a very long time.

Juno had not expected this to surface, not here and now. Not like this. He had thought he’d been doing fine, coping well, treading water because the alternative was to drown. He squeezed his eyes shut, the world still glowing violet behind his eyelids. His head hurt.

His head felt like it had always been hurting.

For once, the Martians were silent. A long moment passed; Juno was not sure exactly how long. Here in the endless abyss, with only his own heartbeat and breathing to anchor him, time didn’t seem entirely important.

_Now you understand_ , the Martians thought finally.

_I always did_ , he responded. He could not soften the blow of his own hurt as it rose to meet theirs, and found itself an equal opponent. _I always did._

They had nothing to say to that.

* * *

**MARS, PRESENT DAY**

Everything made a horrible kind of sense now, and if Sasha Wire were a different kind of person it’d have been enough to make her laugh.

_Rex Glass_. Of course Juno had hooked up with Rex-fucking-Glass, gotten dragged out into the desert, been nearly murdered in an ancient Martian tomb under the ground, and then fled the planet with his new boyfriend in tow.

With the benefit of hindsight, Sasha couldn’t even work up much surprise. “This is a new low, even for you, Steel,” she muttered, testing the handcuffs.

Rex blinked at her placidly. He hadn’t even tried to resist arrest, which meant Sasha was certain he’d already decided exactly how he was going to escape. “Oh, he has a history of this kind of thing?”

“Making me want to drop kick him into the fucking sun?” Sasha snarled, yanking the cuffs. “ _Yes_.”

“For a friend, you sure seem hostile towards the lady,” Rex noted in that same bland tone. “Does he usually have that effect on people?”

“Listen. I could write you a book on the effect Juno Steel has on people, and we still wouldn’t be anywhere near the bottom of the problem. But I _won't_ ,” Sasha scowled, “because _you_ are going to jail.”

“Fair enough, I’m sure,” Rex countered, lifting his arms to examine the cuffs around his wrists. “Are these a new model? Seems like Dark Matters has been updating their arsenal. Good for them, I kept writing letters to head office to tell them that their technology was horribly out of date, I see you’ve been using your new post to enact some positive reforms to the— _argh_!”

Sasha lowered her stun wand, clipping it back to her belt.

Rex surveyed her, panting, his hair standing on electric end. Finally, he swallowed. “Fine. I was hoping we could do this the easy way, with pleasant conversation before the inevitable ‘signing me over to custody of wardens who will happily ensure I never see the light of day again’ tears us cruelly apart, but I suppose I can take a hin— _hey_!”

Sasha lowered her taser for the second time and surveyed the criminal now squirming on the floor for a long moment before folding her arms. “Have I made myself clear yet, _Glass_? Because I could keep going.”

“Crystal,” Rex said, sulking and trembling involuntarily, his pointed teeth peeking out from between thin lips.

If Sasha had been looking to the door, she might have seen it coming. As it was, the explosion took everybody in the room by surprise.

Rita shrieked, taking cover beneath her desk in a motion that looked oddly practiced. Rex rolled towards the wall, curling his legs in to make himself a smaller target. Sasha looked up in time to see the barrel of a ballistic weapon twist back behind the doorframe, evidently wielded by somebody who was keeping themselves out of the line of return fire. There was smoke in the air now, acrid and thick and billowing at an alarming rate up from the scorch mark in the carpet behind Sasha’s foot. She felt the side of her uniform crack from the heat, the standard Dark Matters uniform fabric flexing to absorb the impact and shield her from what would have been a nasty burn.

Sasha leapt aside, flicking her blaster out and narrowing in on the scope, waiting for the first hair of movement on the other side of the door.

For the second time in five seconds, she was looking the wrong direction—the attack came from the window, the one that had been blasted open by the teleporter’s action. A bulky man in a green coat had climbed up to the fifth floor of the office block and crept inside, and he grabbed Sasha from behind now with a strong forearm across her throat. She struggled for the taser at her waist; it was knocked from her grasp and sent spinning to the floor, but the shift in position allowed her to leverage the attacker’s momentum against him and send him sprawling to the ground.

With that opening, Sasha slipped quick fingers inside her blazer and withdrew a small dart and capsule, sending them into the man’s exposed forehead with a flick of her wrist. This happened just in time for the doorway attacker to launch himself into the fray and lunge at her, ballistics forgotten now that his companion was in the room. She threw herself sideways, dancing on her toes to keep from getting knocked to the floor, and was caught by the wrist instead of the center of mass.

“Well, now I’m feeling neglected.”

Rex was free now, and he’d grabbed the taser from the floor. He stood behind her, taller than Sasha by at least a head, his eyes bright and dangerous in the smoke. For a moment Sasha was certain he was going to—but no, he swivelled on her attacker and prodded the man with the blue spark. The jolt ran through him, and he collapsed to the carpet. Sasha gave the downed assailant a swift kick to the ribs, and then twisted herself free from his grip to cuff and tag both attackers for a retrieval team.

Rex took a step back, out of range, the cuffs dangling from one wrist.

“Thought you said they were an improved model,” Sasha noted.

He grinned, inflating with pride as he slipped his wrist entirely free and offered the restraints back to her. “Oh, yes. They are.”

“You aren’t running.”

“You know Juno. Know him well, apparently. And he needs help. I can explain more—and about who sent a hit team to his office, while we’re at it—but only if you allow me the courtesy of a little trust.”

“You’re not getting that,” she responded, and then frowned. “I won’t shoot you. Yet. For Steel’s sake, not yours. But if you place one manicured finger out of line, I won’t be shooting to stun.”

Rex accepted this with a nod, turning back towards Rita. “Are you alright, dear?”

“Oh, yeah, you know, this ain’t even the first time we’ve had a lil bit of an altercation in the waiting room out here, Mista Steel says it’s best to always be prepared for this kinda thing so I’ve got this one totally under control, don’t you fret for a second about it, Mista Glass!”

As Rita spoke, she stood on the edge of her swivel chair, wobbling dangerously as she retrieved a pod extinguisher from the back of a cluttered shelf. Twisting the top to release a cloud of particulate extinguisher, she heaved back and threw it. It blasted itself out towards the fire on the rug, coating everything with a fine opaque mist.

Sasha surveyed the mess, and the two people in front of her. Rita, wobbling. Rex, grinning.

And then another flare of red light and screeching storm came from the office. Another teleport.

Peter himself didn’t wait to see who it was—he had a feeling Juno had intentionally sent himself somewhere else entirely, so any remaining pursuit was likely to be of the hostile kind.

“Juno Steel! Rowan King!” Natalia Snow called feebly, the jump having stolen the air from her lungs.

He grabbed Rita’s arm, pulling her towards the door and gesturing at Sasha to follow. “Time to go, I think!”

And so they went.

* * *

**SOMEWHERE, SOME TIME**

It was a long time before they spoke again.

Juno had gone silent in the haze, and the ache in his head had receded far enough away that he could almost pretend he was alone. It wasn’t necessarily a nice sensation—after becoming so used to feeling it there, he almost missed the thing. Not quite, though. When it piped up again, he suppressed a wince.

_It doesn’t feel entirely like home here_ , the Martian fragments thought, and Juno silently agreed. _But it’s close enough that we trusted it. Trusted them, when they reached out. They couldn’t help us, but they tried._

The detective could still feel that distant presence, watching him. He knew suddenly that he would not be harmed—that the creature, the being, the vast inscrutable alien mind on the other side of that gaze had no conception of how to do harm. It watched, and it was curious, and it listened with an open heart, and it remade the universe to its will. Splitting time and space apart, and piecing them back together in ways that suited it better.

The teleporter was a gift, to a gentle and hurting friend, in the hopes they would visit more. The pill was an apology, because the friend knew they never would.

That should have been a scary realization. Or, at least, it should have frightened Juno that he _knew_ all of that without being told—this didn’t feel like his mind reading abilities, but rather like something else projecting its intent into _him—_ but something prevented fear from taking root inside Juno’s chest. Instead, he just accepted it with a nod.

There was blood on his face, or maybe they were tears. He rubbed them with a sleeve, but the haze was too thick for him to inspect the warm liquid against the sleeve of his coat and he figured it wasn’t overly important.

“What do you want?” he asked out loud, not worrying about whether he would be understood.

_It’s been so long,_ the Martians answered. _Our friends want to know why we never came back. We—I—don’t think I can tell them that they are in danger now, because of us._

“Well, that’s not _my_ problem!” Juno blurted. “ _Living_ means you get to try and do some damage control on your own damn mistakes, and _dead_ just means you’re stuck with however other people want to feel about them!”

_I thought you understood._

“I do! I do, and I make the choice to see that difference every goddamn day, and you know what? Some days that’s the only thing that keeps me moving!” He was shouting now, his voice cracked. “At least when you’re alive, you can keep _trying_!”

The Martians were silent for a long time after that.

* * *

**MARS, PRESENT DAY**

“Did Tiffany have her baby yet?” Nureyev asked lightly, wrapping the injury on his arm quickly. They’d ducked into the closed convenience store on the second floor of the building, hiding down below a row of ice cream coolers to evade a security sweep. Rita was silent for once, her face pale. Sasha looked grim. Peter just wanted to lighten the mood. “While we’re here, I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t ask.”

An odd look spread over Sasha’s face, and then settled itself into outrage. “What the hell do you want with her?”

“She was delightful! I hope she and her child —“

“Oh, no,” the agent said. “No, absolutely no. You infiltrated our organization under false pretenses! You don’t _get_ to act like you give a damn! You charmed us once, and that’s on you. Get anywhere near any of us again, and that’s —”

“But I do care.” Peter tilted his head, evaluating the agent. “The pretenses under which we met may have been false, but the pleasantries were real. I never intended to harm Tiffany—she’s delightful. Always processed my weekly reports promptly, had a tin of those wonderful little frog-shaped candies on her desk.”

Sasha snarled. “Oh, congratulations, you refrained from one murder, we’re throwing you a parade.”

“I was never here to murder anybody!” Peter retorted, and then ducked his head down to tear the edge of the bandage strip with his teeth.

“How about Juno? When he called to let us know there was a rat in our midst, he sounded pretty sure he’d dodged a laser blast to the skull.”

“Juno is—he’s different.” Nureyev glanced down at the burn on the back of his hand. “I’m a much better person since I met him, I think. It’s odd.”

Sasha ducked up from behind the overturned desk, firing a warning shot at the sounds on the other side of the door. And then she slumped down, her face strained in the dark as she hissed, “Oh great, you’re _reformed_! I take back my objections to the lying, thieving, and murder!”

Peter shook his head, tossing the remainder of the first aid kit aside with a silent apology to the cleaning staff. “I wasn’t me when I did those things.”

“Insanity defense? I’ve seen better scum than you try _that_ one before, and I didn’t buy it then either.”

“No. I—I was Rex Glass then. Not—not me.”

“Who are you, then?”

Peter Nureyev opened his mouth, and then closed it. “Now is not the time for that. I believe we have bigger problems.” He gestured with his knife towards the door, and the shadowed figures lurking on the other side of the glass. “Shall we? You don’t have to trust me to accept my help getting out of this predicament.”

Sasha cast him a look of such disdain, Peter caught himself bracing for her to turn on _him._ Instead, she threw herself into the fray, diving down the hallway and out of sight.

Peter was a step behind her, his knife sharp and his movements precise.

The kill on his own target was quick and clean. The mercenary fell silently, and Peter Nureyev slunk back. And then collapsed to his knees.

He felt ill. It rose up in him in a wave, starting with that weakness in his legs that swept awkwardly up to settle in his stomach. Visceral. Horrible. He turned away from the corpse on the floor. Decades of training to leave as little evidence at the crime scene as possible stopped him from flinging the offending dagger as far from his own body as possible, but it was a near thing. His vision narrowed down, going black around the edges.

_What is happening to me?_ he thought frantically, his gaze darting from side to side. It was a sucker punch of a flashback, Juno’s furious voice scolding like a bell that tolled heavily through his head, compelling him to find another way.

_It’s too late for that now._

Peter almost laughed, an absurd impulse. _Luckly, Juno isn’t here. Juno doesn’t have to know_.

_But Peter Nureyev is_ _here_ , _and he_ ** _does_** _have to know_.

The thought stopped him in his tracks for a moment. Peter found himself wasting precious seconds to slump against the side of the stairwell, press his face to the cool concrete wall, and try to breathe. There was blood on his hands— _his_ hands, not hands he could pretend belonged to somebody else—and it was so, so very red.

Peter took a deep breath, and then another. Now was not the time to have a faltering of conscience or a crisis of identity. He wiped his hand clean against the dark of his coat, and met Sasha around the corner with his placid smile firmly in place.

“Mista Glass? You okay?” Rita hissed, reaching up to adjust her bedazzled glasses. “You look—awfully strange. Like, you look like the ghosts in this one stream I saw, well, Frannie made me watch it, where they were all spooky and _horrible_ , and—what happened?”

Peter squared himself against the door at the end of the long hallway with a hard swallow. “Nothing, and I will be just fine. Now let’s get out of here before reinforcements arrive.”

He thanked every single god there was that Sasha joined them then, and silenced Rita with a scowl. “The floor is clear now, Rita. Stay hidden, stay quiet, keep comms open. I’ll send a unit to pick you up.”

“But if Mista Steel is in trouble, I _want_ to help!” she shot back.

Sasha shook her head. “You’ve already helped plenty. No point getting you killed in a shootout. It’s not up for debate.”

Peter hesitated only a moment before allowing the agent to lead the way onwards, leaving Rita alone in the convenience store. The secretary huffed, slumping down behind the cooler once more, and then they rounded the corner and she was out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork for this chapter came from the entirely-stunning Risa, who knocked this piece completely out of the park! I threw this scene at her and she immediately PULLED out...well, everything from it. And then some. I'm still in awe of how it turned out, every time I look at this art it hurts my heartstrings in the best possible way. 
> 
> Thank you, Risa. <3 It's beautiful.
> 
> You can find more of her art at http://specialtater.tumblr.com/


	7. Chapter 7

**SOMEWHERE, SOME TIME**

Juno didn’t mean to change his mind. Nothing about what he was being asked to do felt right—until, suddenly, it did. He sagged, feeling the tension heavy on his shoulders.

“You want me to protect them.”

_We want you to help. Isn’t that what you do, Juno Steel? You find the defenseless, and you try to help._

“Well, I’m not exactly good at it. I know you’ve got an all-access pass to my head, so you might wanna go digging around that track record before you put your money down on this bet.”

 _You’ve seen what humans do. What they are capable of. What they become when they access power greater than themselves._ Just for a moment, Juno saw a flash of light, heard a voice like nails scraping down exposed bone, saw the sick way that Miasma’s skin had floated and twisted and distorted itself. It brought a pang of nausea to his stomach, and he caught his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. The fabric of the trenchcoat Peter had given him was heavy, steadying; it still smelled like Nureyev, and not at all like the place where they had been imprisoned. Juno tried to breathe. _We can’t allow that to happen here. We can’t allow anybody else to gain access to—to our friends. Not through the remnants we left behind._

That passive presence in the purple fog still watched Juno gently, with a curiosity that pulled and ached. Juno knew, then and there, that the Martians were right. This alien mind, the one that created wonders that twisted space and time, would not act to defend itself if it were found. The concept of having to struggle—of having to fight to survive—was one it never had to learn. Not like the Martians had. Not like Juno had.

And so Juno agreed to the demand. He allowed himself to be shattered down to molecules, his atoms swirling on a violet wind as his heart pulled him—firmly, finally, with a beat and a pulse and a swing that felt red— _home_.

* * *

**MARS, PRESENT DAY**

Sasha and Peter hit the street together, panting. Sasha gestured with a hand signal to go left; Peter was already jogging to the right, his long strides carrying him away.

A roar like a hurricane, a flashing of lights and a thud, and then something heavy landed in the dumpster to his right. Peter sprang backwards, his knife in his hand before he realized he’d reached for it, his every sense on edge even though he knew exactly what that display signified.

Juno popped his head out of the skiff a moment later, shaking a candy bar wrapper from his hair. He looked dazed, flushed, somehow _wild_.

He hopped to the pavement and shrugged off Peter’s concerned hand.

“Juno,” Peter said, and he was surprised to find his voice came out shaking. “What. What _are_ you doing?”

“I’d also like to know,” Sasha said. Juno blinked as though he was noticing her for the first time.

“Wire? What are you doing back on Mars?”

“Former friend of mine vanished into thin air. I find out he’s wrapped up with assassins, stolen artefacts, and Rex Glass. Figured I’d investigate myself instead of throwing together a crack squad. _You’re welcome for that_.”

He didn’t make eye contact with either of them for a long moment; his cheek was smeared in blood, and Peter rummaged in his pocket to find a clean wipe and dab at the stain. It came away vibrant; Juno winced, the spell broken.

“We need to break into the HCPD lock-up,” Juno announced. A wild smile crossed his face, uncontrollable, and then he shook his head. “No, listen. I know that sounds crazy. I know everything I’m about to say sounds —”

“Juno, darling?” Peter said, alarm rising in him as he folded the stained handkerchief. “ _Crazy_ may not be the word I’d choose, but you certainly don’t seem to be entirely in your right —”

“Do you have a comm? Can you patch me in?” the detective interrupted. The stitching at his sleeves glinted as he twisted the proffered device into his ear and tuned it with a flick of his fingers. “Rita? Rita! Yeah, it’s me. Listen, I—no, Rita, I missed you too. I promise —” Juno cut himself off, taking a deep breath and trying to steady himself against the edge of the railing. “I’ll make it right. I’ll explain everything. I will. You’re—yeah. Mad. I know. I hear you. But right now, Rita, you’ve got to help me. I know you’ve been listening in through their comms. You’re the only person I know who could even begin to pull this off, and we don’t have much time.”

Peter coughed under his breath. “Perhaps she’s not the only—”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Don’t finish that sentence.”

* * *

**MARS, PRESENT DAY**

After everything, getting into the lock-up was almost depressingly mundane. HCPD evidence in ongoing cases was kept in a warehouse that floated hundreds of stories above the city, accessible only by a single clear elevator that ran up from a security screening checkpoint on the ground below. So Peter scaled the checkpoint building to plant a small device on the side of the antenna that jutted from it, Rita took down the security cameras from a distance, Sasha flashed a badge and gave a stony-faced glare before insisting that yes, Juno was a person of interest in a Dark Matters investigation, yes she would be handling this from here, no she would not be getting into details, and did they really want her to contact their higher ups and threaten the entire damn force with getting steamrolled underneath her intergalactic juridstriction? She was calling their bluff, of course—she had made it crystal clear that her name would _not_ be attached to anything that happened here tonight.

Juno knew that was fair enough.

The guard was not getting paid enough to deal with this—Juno felt _that_ thought loud and clear. It was with no small pang of satisfaction that he watched them press the buzzer below the desk to call the elevator down, and waved the group into it.

And then they were moving. At first Juno’s stomach flipped from the vertigo and the height; there was nowhere safe to look, nowhere to place his eyes that didn’t end in a keen awareness of how far he was from the ground. But Sasha’s mind was steady and firm on one side of him, and Peter’s own mind was enraptured by Hyperion below, and Juno allowed them both to bolster him. At least enough for the nausea to die down.

After a minute or two Juno could even stare out at the city spread below him, his attention caught by the shining edge of the dome and the jagged corners of buildings, the scattered blue wavelengths of the sunset and the red heat of the desert that stretched endlessly beyond it. There was Oldtown on the horizon, comparatively dark and still. There were the skyscrapers and floating gardens of the finance district, flashing with neon and chrome. The part of town where he knew Rita lived, laundry strung across lines between windows some thirty stories up, small displays of trust in one’s neighbors. Vendors on the street; junkies in the gutter. Media and moguls and murderers, all made miniscule by distance. All rendered in hyper detail, just for a moment. Hyperion City was a bubble; it was an oasis. It was a point of light and connection in a vast empty wasteland of a planet. It was grimy and dark and full of pain and misery. And from up here, high in the sky, it _shone_. Like rainbows on the surface of an oil slick, the colors of the city swirled together and created—just for a moment—something truly beautiful.

Juno Steel had never loved it more.

Beside him, Juno could feel Nureyev’s mind whirring. The man hated being so exposed by the clear glass of the elevator; he hated knowing that anybody could look up and find him, fixed in space for all to see. He hated being so close to the atmosphere, even now. Even beneath a dome, part of him still expected the sky itself to turn into a deadly foe.

Juno reached for his hand, twisting their fingers together; the physical contact solidified him, and Juno felt it fill the thief’s stomach with something warm and heavy. Courage. Peter darted a glance at Juno, his eyes difficult to read behind his glasses.

“I’m sorry,” Juno said, quietly. “For—shit. Everything. Especially leaving you behind.”

“You came back, though,” was the equally soft reply, the thief meeting his gaze. “I can...Juno, I can forgive you nearly anything, as long as you’re here to hear me do it. But when this is over, love, we need to talk. Understand?”

“I think so,” Juno said.

Peter tugged lightly on his hand, pulling him in for a kiss. It was a soft brush of lips, a warm exchange of breath, lit from behind by the city lights.

Some of the thief's truths may have been in constant flux, but Juno knew there were certain honest things that Peter Nureyev would never bother to dispute. He was beautiful, yes. He was clever. He was sharp, and keen, and magnetic, and dangerous. And he loved Juno Steel with his entire heart, and that scared him. For a moment Juno could see himself through Peter's eyes—the side of his own face illuminated in the mix of red and blue neon, the scars and dents that life has carved upon his skin, the tired circles around his bloodshot eyes. It was all very familiar, but it looked different, somehow, too. Like the angles and edges of him had been softened, both by loving and by being loved. Peter lifted Juno’s hand, pressing a fervent kiss to the knuckles. Juno lifted his wrist to press his palm against his partner's cheek. His stomach was full of butterflies, and he couldn't tell who's they were.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sasha muttered in the corner of the elevator, “can this thing _go_ any slower?”

* * *

The elevator stopped; the doors opened with a soft whoosh. Juno stepped out first, his head pounding. Directly behind the right eye, the pain continued pulsing in time with his heart. Stronger, now.

 _We’re almost there_.

The evidence lockup was not exactly as he remembered it. Sure, the overstuffed filing cabinets and sealed drawers were there, and most of them were probably still filled with the same unsolved case junk as when Juno had been on the force, but most of them had been pushed aside to make room for row upon row of teleporter pads. It took Juno’s breath away, the smooth cylinders of them pressing up towards the ceiling in all directions, like a forest of metal and glass and symbols that were not actually Martian at all.

Juno wove through them until he found one that felt _right_ , somehow. He held his palm flat to the glass of it, and took a deep breath. He knew how to do this now, how to reach, how to weave his own mind in between the cracks and crevices of the machine’s consciousness, rooting himself inside it like the tiny tendrils of a plant finding a way to move through the solid mass of a sidewalk. It was cold and alien around the warmth of his mind; funny, he had never thought of his own mind as a _warm_ place before. It was an ocean, cold and blue, and it flared red at the core. _Like a Martian sunset_ , he thought. It was everywhere, and he grappled to tread water.

Something far away crashed at the entrance to the room behind him. He didn’t move his hand, but felt his mouth trace out words, “Buy me some time.”

Peter and Sasha peeled away from his side, heading left and right. Somewhere in the dark space, he knew Natalia Snow was advancing onwards in pursuit of a thing she could not ever be allowed to have. He could only hope that his friends found her before she found him.

It was not a nice thought, that the rest was out of his hands. But then the Martians uncoiled inside his mind, the multitude of their voices rising, and he could not bring himself to think much at all.

* * *

The warehouse was dark, the glow from the teleporter pads sweeping up from the ground to light everything from below, eerie shadows dancing. Peter moved silently, a shadow amongst the shadows, his heart in his throat. His knife was still inside his coat, but he suddenly doubted if he had the fortitude to use it. _That_ was not a positive development, he was fairly certain, and he tried to push his concerns back from his mind. The problem was, there was nothing to take their place. He was Rex Glass; he was Rowan King; he was Trinity Papillion; he was none of those people convincingly to anybody, anymore. He was Peter Nureyev, and he did not know how to make a home for his name inside himself.

Natalia Snow almost got the drop on him, distracted as he was. Luckily, Peter had not survived as long as he had in his line of work by being clumsy—he danced backwards on his toes, the back of his jacket brushing against the cold glass of a teleporter. Snow was gone again, her red hair vanishing behind a machine, warped like a funhouse mirror. The glass reflected her backwards, and then her movements were obscured by the reflections bouncing endlessly between each other. Peter edged onwards, his breath catching in his throat. “Director Wire?” he called, “You may want to make your way in my direction.”

The blast went just barely wide. _Good to know the room is throwing off Snow’s aim as well as my own_ , Peter thought, crouching down and slinking back into the shadows.

He didn’t get far. They grappled, Natalia’s grip strong around his throat. Peter drew his knees up, shoving her back, and twisted to try and evade her grasp. Peter Nureyev would not go for his knife. He was sure of that, all of a sudden.

But Natalia Snow had no such compunctions. She raised her blade, and—

Sasha flung herself at them from around a corner, tackling the other woman to the ground. They rolled away, sprang apart. Peter Nureyev pushed himself back up, gasping for air.

But then he had a better idea.

Snow leered at them both, her blaster keeping Sasha Wire at a distance. Her hair had come loose, floating in a wild red halo around her head. She glanced at Nureyev calmly, her eyes dark. “You’re going to stop me with a shoe?”

Peter grinned, his teeth as sharp as the point of the stiletto in his hand. And then he twitched his thumb against the button at the edge of the heel and the arc of lightning shot forward, hitting Snow and stunning her in one single, powerful movement. She crumpled.

In the beat of silence that followed, Nureyev cleared his throat mildly. “I’m absolutely going to stop you with a shoe.”

Sasha sighed, stepping forward. Peter offered the agent a pair of handcuffs, and was pleased to note that his hands were steady. Something inside him felt calmer now; the whirlwind of feelings from the stairwell had, it seemed, finally subsided. “I made some improvements to these while we were walking. You can thank me later.”

Sasha blinked at him in distaste. “Of course you did.”

* * *

Juno _pushed_. The teleporter pushed back. There was blood in his mouth now, blood on his face. His heels had dug into the tile floor; his pulse was pounding. He could feel the Martian consciousness, finally, slip softly and inexorably away from him into the cold dark of the teleporter.

For a long moment, nothing happened. And then, everything did.

The teleporters at the edge of the room shattered first, cracked glass flying explosively outwards. One went, and then another. They burst like lightbulbs, their insides pinging free and rattling violently outwards. Juno could feel the cascade effect reaching outwards—a Martian tomb under the ground, a damaged teleporter in the vault of Natalia Snow—as the entire network destroyed itself. Natalia herself was struggling weakly; Sasha had a knee to her back, cuffs twisted around her wrists. Peter was trying to pull Juno away to safety, but a strength greater than both of them kept the lady pinned to the machine as he felt the teleporters collapse.

A flash of red light; a pull and a rush and a screaming of wind like a hurricane, and then the one he was holding onto finally broke. Juno was thrown backwards, felt himself weightless, felt himself flying, felt the entire city—the entire planet—spin haphazardly below him for that one perfect midair second.

And then he hit the ground. Hard.

His perspective went fuzzy after that; he felt as though he was floating somewhere outside his own head, watching events unfold from a distance. He was feeling the minds around him as they shifted, emotions bleeding together.

They weren’t the only thing that was bleeding, either. That was probably something Juno should have been more worried about.

"We don't have time for this!” Peter yelled, cradling Juno’s face in his lap. “I need you to call for help. You need to send Dark Matters medical staff to those coordinates, jurisdiction be damned! How could you _care_ about your professional reputation at a time like this! He’s—Juno is —"

"It’s not that simple!" Sasha retorted, the edges of her face alight from the glow of shattered teleporters, the red and blue cascades dancing across her in fractal patterns from the shattered glass. “Whatever Juno just did, it’s—no! I won’t bring my name into this. Not for you, and not even for Steel. Unless you can give me something I can trust to make it worth it, it’s a no. I don’t care what —” she said, her gaze slipping to her semi-conscious friend’s face. And then she drew herself up. “I don’t care what’s at stake.”

The world went still for a moment, the solution to the impasse as clear as glass. Peter almost felt his mouth twist at the aptness of the simile, but held it back. Now was no time to be anything less than sincere. He was on pins and needles; he drew a breath.

"You won’t use your name. Fine. How about this: My name is Peter Nureyev," he said, finally.

Sasha Wire blinked.

"I'll spare you the hunting through databases, it's spelled N-U-R-E-Y-E-V. I grew up on Brahma. That should give you enough to find exactly who I am." The thief reached down to his pocket, freeing a small data chip with a bloodied hand and tossing it across the gap between them. "All the information we have about the situation with the teleporters and the thing inside Juno's head is in here. It gives you plenty to arrest Miss Snow on, and should—if Dark Matters’ medical staff remains as skilled as I remember—give them what they need to save Juno’s life.”

Sasha caught it automatically, though her other hand stayed close to her blaster. "Where's the trick, Glass?"

"There is no trick. I'm being entirely honest. By giving you both the information that will save Juno's life _and_ the name that will destroy mine in the same breath, I'm assuring you that you can trust both and that I am not asking you to gamble your reputation on a case that will turn up empty." His pulse was pounding; he could feel it race. Juno twitched feebly in his arms.

"You're not holding anything back, huh?"

Peter bowed his head. "I'm afraid I don't have time to negotiate any further. My detective did something very stupid, and I need your help to be certain he survives. Nothing else matters to me."

"Does Juno know this?" Sasha asked, pensive. "Your name?"

"Yes."

A long pause.

And then, her heart in her throat, Sasha Wire made her decision.

* * *

_Juno was far away. Or maybe he was as close to the heart of his planet as it was possible to be while not becoming crushed beneath the weight of the crust on top of it, the people who built on the surface, the molten core. Maybe it didn’t matter. He was falling, and there was blood on his face and dust in his mouth, and the rest was impossible to define as it coursed through him._

_He thought of the Martians and their birthing chambers, replicating in spirals and droves, scrutinizing and examining and unable to see a way past the bulk of their own being. He thought about the vast and bottomless pool of their mind, the desperation and despair and love, so many and so close to each other and still so incredibly alone._

_Juno felt the mind of Sasha Wire—he felt her worry for him flare bright and oddly soft despite the thorns around it and he knew, in that moment, exactly who she’d always been. She survived and she struggled and she cast herself adrift because the alternative was to be tethered to something that could hold her down. She wondered, sometimes, if that was the right decision. She never let that doubt show. She would let any number of her own selves die, if that was what it took to move forward._

_And far away he felt Rita, her mind spinning like a top and broadcasting out clear as day, familiar as an old storybook despite the physical distance, all plotlines and connections and images jumbled together into a blur. But from inside, looking out, they made perfect sense. She was a thousand constellations unto herself, and each point of light only made the others burn brighter. A swell of fondness for her rose in Juno’s chest — when was the last time he’d told her how much he cared? He couldn’t remember, and found that strikingly and impossibly sad._

_And then Juno thought of Peter Nureyev, and his own mind went completely still. A moment of peace in the flood; his distant body gasped down a breath. What more was there to say about Peter Nureyev? What more could Juno think or feel? A tidal wave, a hurricane. A knife’s edge, a warm embrace. A force of nature. A home._

_I am not alone,_ Juno Steel thought _._

And then he reached out _._

Peter was calling out for him. Juno could hear his voice in the flood, strained and distraught, and he could feel hands on him, gentle despite their worry as they turned his body to face the sky,

“Juno—Juno, love, come back—you only have to hold on a little longer, please—

_Come back to what? The force and fury of the maelstrom whipped back through him, and Juno struggled to keep his footing in the storm. It was a little easier now; even if he didn’t know how to get there, at least he knew where he wanted to go._

_Home._

His hands clenched tightly at his sides, catching the fabric of his coat. The thick dark fabric shone like the stars of a distant galaxy, embroidered roses shining like pinpricks of light to catch his attention. _Nureyev_.

_And then Juno thought about how every person was alone inside their heads, and how the only thing each one of them could do was try to reach the people around them. Each individual a complete and complex planet, atmosphere and biomes spinning in the blackness of space, reaching and aching for connection. Sometimes colliding in catastrophe. Sometimes building bridges. Sometimes finding a way to send a sliver of themselves out into the galaxy, hoping beyond hope that it would be met with kindness. That it would bring back something new. Something worth making their own planet worth giving a crap about._

_Juno thought of how the Martians had tried to do exactly that, and had failed. He looked out to the edge of the room and saw past it. He knew the horizon of a broken red planet, and knew that the shifting red sands covered them. That they, each one, had died alone._

_He couldn’t blame them for that._

_Juno was surrounded by good people. Flawed people. People who deserved better. People who still believed, despite all the years and evidence to the contrary, that he might be a worthwhile part of whatever “better” meant. People who believed in him the way he believed in Mars, or the way the Martians believed in the desert sands. People who reached out because they didn’t know any other way to be._

_Fiercely. Without limit or end._

_They deserved for him to be better—for a single lucid moment, Juno knew that down to his core. He might not be the person they deserved, might never be that person, but that was no reason to stop reaching for them all the same. No reason to let go and die._

_They deserved to reach for him and find solid ground._

_And he deserved to return, and to be forgiven, and to make things right._

“Nureyev,” he breathed, barely conscious of the movement of his lips or the wetness on his face. It was both prayer and promise. Peter deserved better, but he _wanted_ Juno. And Juno wanted him, too.

Maybe that was enough to start with. Love could not fix the winding red pain inside his heart. That was such a big, overwhelming, selfish thing to ask of love.

But for love, Juno could fix himself. Or at least, he could _try_. He could get up every single day and he could _keep trying_.

And maybe, someday, he might even get a thing or two right.

The world went black and rushing inside his ears, the pounding of blood and something much more ancient roaring up through his veins. Far away he heard another familiar voice—Sasha, barking commands into a comm unit, her voice sharp enough to cut.

He felt himself hit the ground as though it was happening from a thousand miles away, felt the Martian dust kick up around his prone form like specks of glass from a shattered window.

Like shards breaking from a mirror.

And then Juno Steel knew nothing more for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did--did Urs make art of my favorite scene in this entire fic, reducing me to a blubbering puddle of emotion?
> 
> Yeah.
> 
> That's exactly what happened. Thank you so much, friend. <3 
> 
> If you want to see more of his art (and you should, because it's stunning!), it's available at http://ursminor.tumblr.com/


	8. Epilogue

**MARS, PRESENT DAY**

"Juno? ....Juno, can you hear me?"

The room came together slowly, white tiles and beeping machines, but Juno only cared about wrestling with his aching head enough to drag one particular part of it into focus. Nureyev was a crumpled mess. His hair was in disarray, his suit jacket wrinkled and sitting awkwardly on his shoulders, his shirt stained with something dark. All the same his eyes were bright and attentive, alight with concern. It was a look that made Juno's stomach twist. The sheer gentleness in it somehow didn't seem fair, and it didn't make sense that it should be directed his way.

 _No_ , Juno thought, consciously pushing back against that thought. _Peter looks like that because he loves me._

He shut his eyes and counted backwards from four, all the same. When he opened them again Peter Nureyev, in all his exhausted glory, was still there and sitting vigil beside Juno's hospital bed. Like there was nowhere else better in the universe for him to be.

"Don't try to get up yet, love," Peter said quietly, his eyes leaving Juno's face just long enough to study one of the many monitors arranged around the bed. "What do you remember?"

Juno ignored the instructions, trying to prop himself up on his elbows. The room tilted, the ceiling tiles twisting as his vision blurred, and he collapsed flat on his back with a slurred curse. When he looked over to Nureyev again, that soft look had a familiar exasperated tinge to it. Juno realized in that moment that maybe he had managed to survive this latest stunt, after all. Given how long afterlives were supposed to last, he doubted his would be frustrated with him already.

"Believe me yet? Stay down for now, detective. If you need something, I can get it."

"I don't—" Juno began, bile and copper rising in his throat. He choked; Peter moved seamlessly to offer a silver tray, and Juno coughed up a chunk of dark blood into it. For a moment they both stared down at it in distaste; then, Juno snorted a weak laugh. "Rough night, huh?"

Peter set the tray down on the table beside the bed. "I'm sure you've had worse."

"Buddy, you don't know the half of it," Juno said, allowing gravity to press his body back against the pillows. "We safe?"

"In a manner of speaking. Before I continue, promise me you'll hear me out before having a fit."

"Oh no."

"Indeed. How much do you remember?”

Juno shut his eyes, considering. His mouth opened, and then he made an effort to close it. He could still hear Peter’s voice calling him, and the weight of that experience in the evidence lock-up—no, on a distant planet—no, inside the heart of an ancient species—spun heavily through his blood. He could feel each one of his heartbeats with a solid thud, ringing through him. Like his body, itself, was more solid. _I want to be better_ , he thought, and nearly let out a low chuckle at the thought of taking _that_ away from a near-death experience. There was irony in there, somewhere, if he wasn’t in too much pain to find it.

He didn’t say any of this out loud. Instead, he muttered something about the teleporter breaking, and getting thrown what felt like halfway across Mars. Nureyev nodded, accepting the story, though the glint of his eyes indicated that he suspected more had occurred than that. Still, he didn’t press, and Juno was grateful. _Should have started dating master thieves years ago, their sense of discretion really is something else._

“Well. When it became clear that your cranial haemorrhaging wasn't going to stop by itself, the Director agreed to assist." Peter pressed his mouth into a sour line.

Juno winced, snapped back to the present. "Sasha—oh, god. What did she want in return? There had to be strings."

Peter shrugged, the movement betraying a flood of emotion. "I wouldn’t be surprised if you can’t read minds anymore. Their medical staff stabilized your optic nerve. In return, I…I handed over several of the readings that had been taken on it."

That explained the deafening quiet in Juno's brain, then. Instead of relief, he felt only panic. "Those readings weren't yours to give!"

"You weren't exactly in any condition to be making decisions, detective." The thief frowned. "They needed the data to save your life. You can be angry with me all you want—I'll happily accept that consequence, as it means you're alive to do it."

"And that can't be the end of it. Sasha—"

"Miss Wire was.... less than thrilled to see me again, it's true. But when I told her of the situation, she agreed to those terms."

"She can't have just—just let you go. Not after the Rex Glass stunt. That's not Sasha's style."

Peter lifted an eyebrow. "She wants to have a word with you about that. Apparently _eloping with the biggest crook she's ever met_ is a problem she'd rather discuss with you, first, before doing anything drastic to me."

Juno groaned. "Can I go back to being dead? Is that an option?"

"I'd really prefer you didn't," Peter said, reaching for Juno's hand. That strange gentleness was back in his eyes, and Juno closed his own rather than face it. "Rest, Juno. You're safe, and I won't allow harm to come to you. I'll be here when you wake up. For now, just try to sleep.”

* * *

When he woke up again, Nureyev was gone.

 _No, this isn’t right—he promised._ Juno caught himself searching the room, feeling briefly lost, a stab of panic rising inside his chest.

Beside the bed, Sasha Wire clicked her tongue. "Relax, he's just gone to eat something and change his clothes. The machines told him you'd be under for at least another few hours still, he fully intended to be here for that, but I woke you up early."

It would have been embarrassing, if Juno weren't too weak and sore to feel much of anything other than tired. Instead he watched Sasha warily, grateful for the sedation that muted the furious ache of his entire body.

She leaned in. "While we're alone, we need to talk. First off, I hate to break it to you, but your boyfriend isn't who he says he is."

Juno blinked at her.

Sasha continued, "I found a blood sample in the tomb. He didn't just lie to Dark Matters—he's lied to everybody. There's no match in any database, anywhere. Whoever Rex Glass told you he was, he's lying through his pointy teeth about it. You don't get wiped from the system without one hell of a lot of effort."

The laugh that came out of Juno's throat was involuntary, strangled, and of a much higher pitch than anybody had thought possible. For a moment he was gasping for air, nearly hysterical; his hand clutched at the glass of water on the bedside tray, and he tried to compose himself by taking a sip. "You—you don't say, huh? I hadn't noticed."

Sasha peered at him in concern. "That's not a sound I've heard come out of you before."

"Yeah, me neither. Right. Okay. I'm back." He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, out of breath. "Phew. We were at the part where you'd figured out that Rex Glass is a lying liar who lies, right?"

"So, I'm assuming you knew about that."

"Just a little bit, yeah."

"So let me get this straight: that man is on a crime spree, and you're knowingly aiding and abetting."

“What can I say? You set us up on one hell of a blind date.”

“Not intentionally.”

Juno shrugged. "It's been a strange few months, Wire."

"And it's about to get stranger. Listen, Juno: this isn't going to be the last time things like this happen. Now that these Martian artefacts have begun resurfacing, and powerful people know that they're out there, the race is on. At least when—whoever the hell Miasma was, at least she was scary enough to keep competition away. Now, it’s anybody’s game." She leaned back in her chair, shoving a hand through her hair with a heavy sigh. "Which is why I'm bringing you on board, on a commission basis. I want you to find these things and keep them out of dangerous hands. Reporting directly to me, of course."

"And you expect me, what, to just trust that Dark Matters has everybody's best interests at heart here?" Juno frowned. "You know better, Wire. And you know _me_ better."

"I—shit, Juno. If you must know, that's exactly why I'm asking _you_ to do this instead of assembling a task force internally." She lowered her voice. "I need to know that if it's something where lives are at stake on the ground, the person on the other end will do what needs to be done. No corporate ambition. No thinking of people as disposable. Going above my head, even, if needed. I know—ugh. I know I'll make the wrong choice. By which I mean, I'll make the right choice, the textbook choice, every single time, and people will die for it. And, gods help us all, I know if placed at the same crossroads, you'll always do the exact opposite from me.”

“By which you mean, the stupid wrong decision.”

“With unbearably noble consequences, yeah. So. Offer's on the table, for you and your—whatever he is.”

“I think he’d like the term _partner in crime_. Can we put that on the paperwork?”

“Juno. Take this seriously. I’m offering Dark Matters resources and capital, as well as a reasonable degree of legal cover, in exchange for your investigative and retrieval services."

"Well, that's a euphemism and a half." And then Juno blinked. "Thought you wanted to shoot Rex."

"I did want to. I still want to. Very, very badly." Sasha stretched her arms out in front of her, lacing her fingers together to crack her knuckles. "But that might be a deal-breaker here, so I'm going to refrain. For tactical reasons. Believe me, I still absolutely want to shoot him. But I won't. Yet."

"I...I appreciate that, Sasha."

"...You know, on Brahma they sing songs about a hero named Peter Nureyev. In secret, of course. You might want to look that up, sometime."

Things clicked into place. Juno felt ill. _Oh. Peter, what did you do?_

"Maybe I will."

She stood, scraping the metal legs of the chair back against the tile floor. "Get some rest. We'll talk more later, iron out the details." She leaned forward to adjust the sedative drip with an elegant twist of her wrist and strode to the door. And then, so softly Juno almost had to strain to hear it, she added, “I'm glad you're okay, Juno.”

“Hey, Wire? Next time you’re on Mars, you should hit me up for a visit. I’ll even make the damn drinks myself, no killer robots guaranteed.”

She paused, briefly. And then a strange look crossed her face—it took a moment for Juno to realize it was the closest thing her face knew how to a smile. “I might take you up on that, Steel.”

Her heels clicked sharply as she strode finally towards the door. Juno watched her go, his head already swimming. He was asleep again before the sound had completely faded down the hallway.

* * *

**MARS, THREE WEEKS LATER**

Evening in Hyperion City.

Outside the window, neon glowed. Cars flew, people ebbed and flowed, and some parts of the city prepared to go to sleep while others prepared to come alive. Inside the office of Juno Steel, Rita was preparing to leave for the night.

“I’m just saying, boss, he’s been real good for you,” Rita said, folding her arms across her chest. Her bracelets jangled; her hair was scooped up into a bouffant on the top of her head. “You seem like you’re doing a little better each day, Mista Steel, and that’s good to see—

“Rita—”

“Mista Steel, I know you don’t really want anybody noticing that kinda thing but I _have_ noticed that you’ve been goin’ to your appointments and taking care of yourself and I’m—ooh, I’m real proud of you, ya know?” Rita danced up onto her tiptoes, darting toward. Before Juno could even try to fend her off, she had planted a kiss in the middle of his cheek. And then she pulled back, bustling to get her coat.

“Mista Glass says they do that on _Charon_ , ain’t it fancy? Kissing like that to say hello and goodbye, it’s so—so— _cosmopolitan_!” She fluttered so hard Juno was amazed her feet stayed touching the ground, her bag bobbing on her shoulder and the many brooches on her coat clinking against each other with a musical chime. She hadn’t come through the ordeal any worse for wear, and it amazed Juno every time he thought about it.

Juno felt a surge of fondness rise through him as he watched her. He still believed he didn’t deserve a friend like Rita; he was trying to get better at being grateful for her all the same. “See you tomorrow, Rita. Safe trip home.”

“See you then, boss,” the secretary chirped, meeting his gaze with a smeared lipstick smile of her own. It lit up her entire face. “Don’t stay up workin’ too late, you hear me?”

And then she was gone before he could reply, the door swinging shut behind her, and Juno was alone in the office once more.

* * *

“Ruby!” Peter exclaimed, closing the distance to the sleek sports car at a jog. The RUBY7 was parked outside Juno’s office, and Rita was waiting beside it.

“You owe your car an apology,” Rita exclaimed as soon as he was within shouting distance, her hands on her hips. “She’s a real fancy lady and you just left her behind! She was gonna go meet you on Asperata but then you weren’t there, you know, and by the time she made it back to Mars she was well and truly tired of all of this garbage!”

“The poor darling,” Peter murmured as he drew up, reaching out to lightly touch the hood. The engine revved beneath his gentle fingertips, and Nureyev knew it was more akin to a hiss than a purr. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Things got complicated. I knew you’d find your way back, you’re capable and lovely.”

Mollified, the dashboard beeped twice.

Rita cleared her throat.  “Soooooo, she got back three days ago! Frannie and I took her shopping this weekend and she _really_ wanted to help hack into the Kanagawa network to un-cancel _Orbiting Hearts_ , you know, it really shoulda gotten seven full seasons and now it will, and maybe you oughta talk to her about doing so much crime, but also it’s not really a crime if it’s undoing an even bigger crime and bringing a stream back, right?” Rita was practically vibrating.

Nureyev smiled. “If it is a crime, it’s among the more easily forgiven ones. Especially if it was committed against the Kanagawas.”

“Right! That’s what I told Frannie, and she didn’t believe me!”

“Is your boss in?”

“Ooh, yeah!” She squinted, shoving her bedazzled glasses up on her nose. “You two take care of each other, you hear? You’ve both—both been doing a real good job at that, and it gets me all choked up sometimes.”

“Of course I will, Rita. As long as he’ll let me do it.”

* * *

Juno put on the radio; it was playing something soft and familiar, with a gentle rhythm. He shuffled some papers around, poking at a package that had been hand-delivered that morning. It was a thick file folder, matte black, and smelled faintly of Sasha Wire’s perfume; he hadn’t opened it, not yet. Instead it went into the lowermost desk drawer for later consideration. Juno leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, chin tipped to the ceiling, thinking.

“Is that something I should be worried about, Juno?”

Juno opened his eyes. “What?”

Peter was leaning against the doorframe, his silhouette lean and relaxed, his voice teasing as he gestured to the side of his own face. “Do I have competition?”

“Trust me, nobody you have to worry about.” Juno reached up to where Rita had kissed him, mildly alarmed as his fingers came away a distressing shade of fuschia.

“Oh, I know. That color looks wonderful on Rita, I told her so when she let me inside.” Peter made his way across the room to perch on the edge of the desk, his teeth sharp as his lips curved. “Better on you, though.”

“I think it was originally mine, she’s like a damn magpie with unattended cosmetics,” Juno retorted. And then he frowned. “Hey, Nureyev? Something’s been bothering me. How did Sasha find your name? Was it Rita—“

“I told her myself.”

“ _What_.”

“She needed something she could trust, and I needed to be trusted.” The thief shrugged, an unreadable expression on his face. “I am Peter Nureyev. That is my name. I may not entirely know who that person is yet, but it was a fair trade to give.”

Juno felt a lump rise in his throat. Turned away, his gaze fell on the middle desk drawer. He slid it open to retrieve an envelope and offered it to Peter with a gentle hand. “Speaking of trust, this is yours now.”

Nureyev accepted the envelope, opening it lightly. The key inside was attached to an unmarked black chain. He tipped it out into his palm, glancing up to meet Juno’s eyes.

Juno shrugged, watching Nureyev intently. “I know you don’t need it…”

Peter cracked into a grin. “That’s an understatement.”

Juno was going to retort, but something on the thief’s face broke his composure. He chuckled. “Well, I wanted you to have it, all the same. I’ll be sticking around here for now, but—well, I still want you.” The words caught thickly in his throat. “I want you. It’ll bypass everything Rita’s got set up on my apartment. Might make your life a little easier.”

“I’ll keep it safe,” Peter Nureyev promised, looping the key to Juno’s apartment around his neck. It settled against his chest; he tucked it safely inside his shirt, where it sat warm and heavy above his heart.

It hit him then: after all these years, Peter Nureyev had a _home_ again. His face went still, his eyes briefly closing.

Juno gave him a moment before asking, softly, “Are you alright, Nureyev?”

“I think...I’ve never been better.” He stepped forwards, extending a graceful hand towards Juno. In the background, the radio still played. “Love, I simply _can’t_ bear to hear music like this and remain still. May I have this dance?”

Juno accepted it, hooking his hand around his partner’s and allowing himself to be led out of his chair and into the middle of the office. The soft music enveloped the space, gentle and expansive as a warm bath.

For the second time, they waltzed.

“I’ve been meaning to ask: where did you learn how to dance?” Peter asked, his voice low and soft.

“My brother taught me,” Juno said. It didn’t hurt quite as much as he’d expected, saying it out loud. Maybe there was something to this _healing_ garbage after all, though he’d be damned if he’d ever actually admit that out loud. Baby steps, sure. He could handle taking one of them at a time.

Juno closed his eyes and pressed his face into Peter’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of a distant galaxy. Peter took the cue; his hands settled at Juno’s waist, and they swayed close together. Outside the window, the lights of Hyperion City twinkled; inside Juno’s office, the shadows were not as long as they had seemed to be before.

Someday, maybe, they would try to see the universe again. But until then, Juno Steel would do his best to help make his city into a place worth living in.

His heart, too.

And, no matter what came their way, the thief named Peter Nureyev would be honoured to stand by his side.

For now, it was good. It was better than good. It was perfect, both as a beginning of one thing and the ending of something else.

The shifting red sands drifted across the deserts of Mars, and Juno Steel would not face them alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. Allow me to ramble a bit, here at the end of this one:
> 
> First, thank you so much to the amazing artists who poured their own passion into this project! Risa and Urs, you two brought this story to life, and I’m so incredibly grateful to you both. There is so much love in this Chili’s tonight, y’all.
> 
> Second, thank you so much to the Penumbra Mini-Bang Discord—you are such a wonderful group of people who have created such amazing art, and I’m inspired and grateful every day to have been part of it. Bri and KARIN—you two deserve all the kudos for running such an excellent event, and bringing such a vibrant community together. You can find the other Penumbra Mini-Bang fic and art at: 
> 
> https://penumbrabang.tumblr.com/
> 
> I highly recommend you go check it out, because this wonderful group of people created some truly inspiring stuff.
> 
> Third, thank you for the tireless work of my beta, @ambientmagic. She put up with so much of my nonsense, took a flamethrower to untold typos, played matchmaker to a myriad of lonely sentence fragments, gave the pacing a kick in the ass, and saw my metaphorical underwear showing so many times. Truly, she carved this fic into something that’s hopefully been worth reading. Any remaining errors, of course, are entirely my own. As is the (1) interrobang I was allowed to keep after she was done with me. <3
> 
> Fourth, the title comes from “How To See The Future,” by Warren Ellis. The entire essay is worth a read because it does some real magic with words, but I’ll offer up this piece of it: 
> 
>  
> 
> _“Imagine a world where you could quite literally walk to space. That’s actually got a bit more going for it, as an idea, than exotic red deserts and canals. Imagine living in a Martian culture for a moment, where [Olympus Mons] is a presence in the existence of an entire sentient species. A mountain that you cannot see the top of, because it’s a small world and the summit wraps behind the horizon. Imagine settlements creeping up the side of Olympus Mons. Imagine battles fought over sections of slope. Generations upon generations of explorers dying further and further up its height, technologies iterated and expended upon being able to walk to within leaping distance of orbital space.”_
> 
>  
> 
> Fifth and finally: thank you, dear reader.
> 
> Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for going on this journey with me.


End file.
